BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 



MORALITY. Of the Doctrine of Morality in 
Relation to the Grace of the Redemption. 12mo, 
cloth, |1.50. 

SERMONS preached in the Chapel of St. Stephen's 
College, Annandale, K Y. 8vo, cloth, $2.00. 

THOMAS WHITTAKER, Publisher, 

2 and 3 Bible House, New York. 



THE OBLATION 



AND 



THE INVOCATION 

BEING AN INQUIRY INTO THEIR HIS- 
TORY AND PURPOSE 



BY 



ROBERT B. FAIRBAIRN, D.D., LL.D. 

Warden of St. Stephen s College, A nnandale^ N. Y. 




Ncto STorfc 

THOMAS WHITTAKER 

2 and 3 Bible House 

1894 



niff-^ f 



?% 



Copyright, 1894, 
By THOMAS WHITTAKER. 




BURR PRINTING HOUSE, NEW YORK. 



TO THE 

MEMORY 

OF 

JULIET FAIRBAIBN, 

WHO FOR MORE THAN FORTY-FOUR YEARS 

WAS THE FAITHFUL AND BELOVED 

WIFE 

OF 

THE AUTHOR, 

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

History of the Oblation and the Invocation, . 9 



PART FIRST.— Oblation. 

CHAP. 

I. Oblation in Roman Liturgy, , . 29 

II. Oblation in the Greek Liturgies, . . 45 

III. What is Offered in the Oblation, . . 56 

IV. Views of Doctors of the Early Church, . 73 
V. Views of Anglican Theologians, . . .89 

PART SECOND.— Invocation. 

I. The Spiritual Gift in the Eucharist, . . 113 

II. The Relation of the Holy Ghost to the 

Eucharist, . . . . . .130 

III. Eucharistic Controversy, . . .146 



HISTOEY OF THE OBLATION AND THE 
INVOCATION. 

" We ha\e as good evidence, as we have for the canon of 
Scripture itself, that this form and order was used and pre- 
scribed by the apostles."— T. Brett. 



HISTORY OF THE OBLATION AND THE 
INVOCATION. 

h* the new edition of the standard Prater-Book 
one of the amendments is the position which is given 
to the oblation and the invocation in the prayer of 
consecration. They are now printed as separate para- 
graphs. Particular attention is thus drawn to them. 
They are placed before us in a manner to arrest our 
attention, which will lead to the inquiry, What is 
their history ? and what is their purport ? 

We are often reminded that it is one of the marked 
and valuable benefits which Bishop Seabury conferred 
on the Church in this country in introducing them 
from the Scotch book into the place which they now 
occupy in our office. This is only partly true ; but 
it is so far correct as to make us indebted to the first 
Bishop of Connecticut for the privilege of now using 
them. 

But it is very singular that we never find them ex- 
plained, illustrated, or held up to view. Other parts 
of the office are the subject of sermons, essays, and 
treatises ; but there seems to be a remarkable silence 
in regard to these two acts. The possible reason is 
that they are not in the English office. And we allow 



12 HISTOBY OF OBLATION AND INVOCATION 

ourselves to be so dependent on English Churchmen 
for our books of theology and liturgical exposition, 
that, not finding anything from this quarter, we have 
consequently not any exposition of them at all. But 
now that they are printed in such a manner as to call 
special attention to them, we shall, no doubt, be in- 
terested in knowing their origin and their import ; 
and the reason why we are expected to pay especial 
honor to Seabury for the influence which he exerted 
in having restored them to our American office, and 
in thus enabling us to follow the example of nearly 
all the rest of the Catholic Church. 

It will be well, then, to inquire, first, whence they 
came. In the American book they are preceded by the 
sacred words, and stand in this order : the words of 
institution, the oblation, and the invocation. These 
three acts seem to be the centre of the service, the 
nucleus, which give character to it, and which make 
it to be what it is. At any communion, should the 
elements not be sufficient for the number of commu- 
nicants, there is ordered by rubric a new consecra- 
tion ; but the service for this purpose is confined to 
the use of these three acts — viz., the sacred words, 
the oblation, and the invocation. Ifc would appear, 
therefore, without doubt that these three acts make 
the Eucharist. In the English book of Edward VI. 
the invocation came first, then the sacred words, and 
in the third place the oblation; but in the present 
English book the invocation comes before the words 



HISTORY OF OBLATION AND INVOCATION 13 

of institution, and the oblation is omitted. It is 
this invocation which is introduced into the Ameri- 
can office, and not the one in the Scotch office. In 
all the Eastern liturgies, such as that of Constantino- 
ple and the Eussian Church, they stand in the same 
order and with the same distinctness as they do in 
our book. In the Koman liturgy the sacred words 
and the oblation following them are very clear and 
distinct, and occupy the place which is occupied in 
all the Greek liturgies. But the invocation is not 
clear and distinct. It is not a prayer for the Holy 
Ghost to descend on " these gifts and creatures of 
bread and wine ;" but it certainly implies the same 
when it says, " We humbly beseech Thee, Almighty 
God, command these things \haic\ to be carried by 
the hands of Thy holy angels unto Thy high altar, 
in the presence of Thy Divine Majesty, that as many 
of us as, by this participation of the altar, shall receive 
the most sacred body and blood of Thy Son, may be 
replenished with all heavenly benediction and grace." 
In the Clementine liturgy the invocation of the Holy 
Ghost is for the same purpose. The two agree in 
their purport, but the Soman omits the direct address 
to the Holy Ghost. 

We have, then, the introduction of these three acts 
in all the liturgies except the English. Of the omis- 
sion of the oblation and of the change of the invoca- 
tion more will be said in another place. 

It must strike us at once that there is some special 



14 HISTORY OF OBLATION AND INVOCATION, 

reason why such marked and distinct acts should hold 
a prominent and central place in all the liturgies. 
The question is, Whence did they come ? What is 
their origin ? 

Palmer, in his " Origines Liturgicse," * says that the 
liturgies of the Church may be reduced to four fam- 
ilies. He meant by this that all liturgies may be 
classed under one of these four divisions. The first 
is that of " St. James, or the great Oriental Liturgy, 
which prevailed in all the Christian churches from 
the Euphrates to the Hellespont, and from the Hel- 
lespont to the southern extremity of Greece. The 
second was the Alexandrian, which from time imme- 
morial has been the liturgy of Egypt, Abyssinia, and 
the country extending along the Mediterranean Sea 
toward the west. The third was the Koman, which 
prevailed throughout the whole of Italy, Sicily, and 
the civil diocese of Africa, The fourth was the Gal- 
lican, which was used throughout Caul and Spain, 
and probably the exarchate of Ephesus." 

These liturgies were in use in the Church at the 
beginning of the fourth century ; but it is plain also 
that they were in use during the two previous cen- 
turies, so that we can quote them as authority, to a 
certain extent, up to a period within one hundred 
years of the last of the apostles. We can quote them 
as bearing witness that these three acts were in all 
these liturgies up to this date. We may not be able 

* Vol. i., 8. 



HISTORY OF OBLATION AND INVOCATION. 15 

to quote every expression in the oblation or in the in- 
vocation. "We cannot say that this or that expres- 
sion, or that this or that word, was used in making 
the oblation in any liturgy— say, for instance, that of 
St. James ; but we can say this, that the liturgy of 
St. James and other liturgies are witnesses to the fact 
of there being an oblation and an invocation. There 
are numerous quotations and references in the ser- 
mons and letters and treatises of the great preachers 
and writers of the fourth, third, and second centuries 
from the liturgical sources. The Epistles of St. 
Cyprian, and the treatise of Justin Martyr, and the 
essays of Tertullian, and the works of Irenasus show 
lis that there were an oblation and an invocation. 
There can be no doubt that these important parts of 
the service existed and were in use in the second cen- 
tury. 

Here were liturgies, we may say four, in different 
parts of the world — throughout the civilized world 
of that day. If a Christian had travelled from Paris 
through Aries and Lyons to Milan and Eome, and 
across the Mediterranean to Hippo and to Carthage, 
and on to Alexandria and to Cesarea, and back to 
Constantinople, and to cities on routes shooting out in 
all directions from the Mediterranean, he would have 
heard in each church, in each parish church of each 
of these four grand divisions, on every Sunday morn- 
ing, the Eucharistic service, in which the sacred words, 
the oblation, and the invocation formed the nucleus. 



16 HISTOBY OF OBLATION AND INVOCATION. 

This is revealed to us in quotations from Augustine, 
and Chrysostom, and Cyril, and Cyprian, and Irenseus, 
and Tertullian, and Justin Martyr. 

Now when we find these three acts in each liturgy, 
used in every part of the civilized world, in every part 
of the Koman Empire, and in the provinces beyond 
it, must we not conclude that the liturgy, and espe- 
cially the nucleus of the liturgy, came from one 
source ? Suppose that no one of the liturgies was yet 
written, still it must be obvious that to the Church 
of Alexandria, and to Carthage, and to Cesarea, and 
to Eome, and to Ephesus there must have been 
brought a form of worship from some common source. 
Such likeness must indicate and prove that the wor- 
ship of the Church, as the Church itself, was carried 
from a centre to these distant cities— that it was car- 
ried from the " upper room" of Jerusalem to the 
churches most remote from that city. Would it not 
be incredible that St. Mark, at Alexandria, and St. 
John, at Ephesus, and St. Peter, at Eome, indepen- 
dently and without consultation and agreement, hit 
upon the same mode, and the same order, and in a 
large measure on the same expressions in giving utter- 
ance to the Eucharistic worship ? In the second cen- 
tury we have proofs from the adoption of these three 
acts — the sacred words, the oilation, and the invoca- 
tion — that there was an agreement among the apos- 
tles what the worship of the Christian Church should 
be. There must have been a form of worship which 



HISTOR T OF OB LA TION AND IJSTVO OA TlOJSf. 1 7 

had taken such a hold on their minds and their mem- 
ories that it was the one adopted wherever the Church 
in all the world was planted. The worship of the 
Church must, therefore, have been of apostolical 
origin, so far at least as its form was concerned. 

But as we find this in the second century, let us 
look at the assembly of the apostles at Jerusalem. 

Immediately after the day of Pentecost we read 
that numbers were added to the one hundred and 
twenty disciples of " the upper room ;" and there im- 
mediately took place what of necessity must have 
taken place — namely, an organization ; and the or- 
ganization was held together, as any organization must 
be held together, by certain principles and rites. We 
are told (Acts 2 : 41) that three thousand were added 
unto them, and held to them by four acts. It was 
these four acts which separated them from any other 
society, and which bound them together as one dis- 
tinct and peculiar body. "We read that all those who 
had been baptized, who by baptism had been initiated 
into this society, " continued steadfastly in the apos- 
tles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread 
and in prayers" (Acts 2 : 42). This may be more 
accurately translated thus : They continued in the 
doctrine and in the fellowship of the apostle3, and in 
the breaking of the bread and in the prayers. The 
article points out distinctly four acts, and shows that 
those acts were marked and separate acts. There 
was, first, the doctrine ; they all believed that Jesus 



18 HISTORY OF OBLATION AND INVOCATION. 

Christ was the Son of God (Acts 8 : 37). There was, 
second, a fellowship ; there was union one with an- 
other ; there sprang up at once a society which we 
call the Church. There was the third act, which was 
the breaking of the bread. It was not only breaking 
bread, which might be a social meal, but it was the 
breaking of the bread, which was appointed for a 
specific purpose (St. Luke 22 : 19 ; 1 Cor. 11 : 25). 
And the fourth act was the prayers. They had a 
service which expressed their relations to God in the 
Church of the Eedeemed, and they continued day 
after day in the breaking of bread. And years after 
at Troas (Acts 20 : 7), "upon the first day of the 
week, the disciples came together to break bread." 
Now this was one of the distinguishing acts of the 
Christian worship. Could this act have been per- 
formed daily, or day after day, without the one offi- 
ciating or leading falling into some form, some specific 
manner of celebrating the service ? It is not likely 
that St. John would do it one way to-day and St. 
Peter another way to-morrow, but it is natural — that 
is, it is according to man's habits as they spring out 
of his nature— to fall into a fixed way of performing 
such an act and of using certain words and expres- 
sions, so that all the apostles would come very soon 
to do it in the same manner. And the first thing 
would be the repeating the words which our Lord 
used in instituting this great rite of commemoration 
and of worship. And after the apostles " were scat- 



HISTORY OF OBLATION AND INVOCATION 19 

tered abroad upon the persecution which arose about 
Stephen' ' (Acts 11 : 19), and they went to the Gen- 
tiles to carry the Gospel, and to make converts to the 
Christian faith, and to set up the worship of the 
Church, what would be the form in which they would 
celebrate this worship ? They would, as they had 
done at Jerusalem, continue steadfast in the doctrine 
and in the fellowship, and in the breaking of the 
bread, and in the prayers. And would they not do it 
in the form in which they had done it ? If St. Mark 
went to Alexandria, would he not carry with him the 
worship and the breaking of the bread, as well as the 
doctrine and the fellowship of the apostles, as they 
had been adopted at Jerusalem? And would not this 
continue year after year and generation after genera- 
tion at Alexandria? And would they not call the 
liturgy of this Church, though amended and enlarged 
and enriched, the liturgy of St. Mark ? And would 
not the same be true of the Church of Ephesus and 
of the Church of Rome ? 

It is difficult, nay, impossible, to conceive how in 
these different and distant churches there should be 
the same forms, and in many instances the same ex- 
pressions ; how there should be the use of the sacred 
words, the oblation, and the invocation in the break- 
ing of the bread, unless it should have come from a 
common source, from the apostolic college before the 
dispersion after the persecution about Stephen. 

It must be remembered also that the first three 



20 HISTORY OF OBLATION AND INVOCATION 

Gospels differ from each other quite as much as the 
liturgies differ. The three Gospels came from a com- 
mon source. They are the record of our Lord's acts 
and words, but the difference is not a contradiction, 
but a difference which is due to the individuality of 
those who recorded the acts and the words of our 
Lord. Yet there is presented the one great truth 
that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is the Saviour of 
the world, and that He came in human flesh to redeem 
us. So the different liturgies show the same indi- 
viduality of the apostles, but also show a unity in 
these great acts — the sacred words, the oblation, and 
the invocation. They are the central acts, the nucleus 
of the Christian worship. The central idea is the 
Christ, the redemption of the world. It is the com- 
memoration of that great act which is held up and 
presented before God the Father. Take those acts 
away and there is no Eucharist left. The service 
would then become merely the dictate of the human 
heart. Put in those acts, and the worship becomes 
Christian worship ; and the great act which they com- 
memorate and exhibit is the great act of Christian re- 
demption. 

It is not maintained that the apostles wrote out a 
liturgy, and that these liturgies which now bear their 
names were written by them j but we must conclude 
that the liturgy of St. James, and of Si. Mark, and 
of St. John, which exhibit the form of worship that 
prevailed in Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Ephesus, 



HISTORY OF OBLATION AND INVOCATION 21 

were first given by those apostles, and that alteration 
and enlargement came afterward, as the condition of 
the Church demanded them. 

It is also apparent from some expressions in the 
New Testament that the liturgy of St. James was 
before the mind of the apostle when his Epistle to 
the Corinthians and the Epistle to the Eomans were 
written. He said (1 Cor. 2 : 9) : " As it is written, 
Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered 
into the heart of man, the things which God hath 
prepared for those that love Him." This has greatly 
perplexed commentators. "Where does this quotation 
come from ? Who wrote it ? There is no passage in 
the Old Testament which agrees with it. Isa. 64 : 1 
has been named. But Bloomfield says on this pas- 
sage that " the dissimilarity with the Hebrew and 
the Septuagint is so great, that some have fan- 
cied the words were quoted from a lost apocryphal 
book or a traditionary story of the Habbins." But 
there is another difficulty, which is the pronoun 
with which the quotation begins, which is ignored 
in our common version, and which is introduced 
very clumsily into the new translation. Bloomfield 
has bracketed it [a], and thinks that it may have 
crept into the text, and that it was not there origi- 
nally. 

But if we now refer to the liturgy of St. James, 
which was the liturgy in all the countries in which 
St. Paul carried on his apostolic work, we shall find 



22 BISTORT OF OBLATION AND INVOCATION 

the quotation,* and the pronoun with its proper an- 
tecedent, and all the trouble will cease. And that the 
liturgy of St. James should have preceded the Epistle 
to the Corinthians is as natural as that the establish- 
ment of the Church and its worship and sacraments 
should have existed before he wrote these letters of 
instruction. 

We must believe, therefore, that the liturgy of St. 
James, or at least an early form of that liturgy, which 
was afterward to be enlarged and enriched, to express 
more fully the character of the Eucharist, but the cen- 
tral acts of which consisted then of the sacred words, 
the oblation, and the invocation, was used in these 
churches in Greece and in the provinces which we 
now call Asia Minor ; and that it was the form which 
St. Paul used in the breaking of bread at Troas, and 

* In the common version the quotation reads : " Eye hath 
not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of 
man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love 
Him." In the Greek it stands thus : aXka KaOog yeypairrai a 
otyBakfioq ovk eiSe % kcli ovg ovk qaovoE, k. r. "X. In the new version 
it is translated in this manner : " Things which eye saw not, 
and ear heard not, and which entered not into the heart of 
man, whatsoever things God prepared for them that loved 
Him." But the Greek in the liturgy of St. James stands 
thus : " aicdvca gov duprjfiara a o^Qaljuog ovk eide, Kai ovg ovk tjkovgs 
. . . a TjTOLfiaGag , Qeog, roig ayairoGi ce," which is thus trans- 
lated, and shows the force of the pronoun as the antecedent 
stands before it. " Grant us these heavenly and eternal re- 
wards which eye hath not seen, nor ear hath heard." 



HISTORY OF OBLATION AND INVOCATION. 23 

at Corinth, and in all the other churches the care of 
which came upon him. 

But we have another proof that one of these lit- 
urgies was before the apostle's mind when he wrote 
to the Church at Eome. The epistle was probably 
written from Corinth, and therefore the same liturgy 
of St. James was before him. He says to the Eomans 
(15 : 15, 16) : "I have written the more boldly unto 
you in some sort, as putting you in mind, because of 
the grace that is given to me of God, that I should 
be the minister (Xezrvpyov) of Jesus Christ to the 
Gentiles, ministering the Gospel of God, that the 
offering (?} npoaqtopa) up of the Gentiles might be 
acceptable, being sanctified {rjyiaa juevr/) by the Holy 
Ghost. ' ' Now here we have three words which are 
liturgical words and words of St. James's liturgy, and 
two of them refer to two of the three acts which form 
the nucleus of the Eucharistic service. There is first 
Aeirvpyov, which refers to the one who ministers the 
liturgy or the Eucharistic service, and from which the 
word liturgy is derived. Then there is the oblation, 
which the Greeks called the npoGqiopot, and is the 
word in the liturgy of St. James which is used 
in making the offering ; and then we have the 
word {rfyiaa juevr?) sanctification, which again is 
the word used in this liturgy — " Send down, Lord, 
Thy most Holy Spirit . . . that He may sanctify 
(ayiatfrf)" 

When the apostle used these words, which have a 



24 HISTORY OF OBLATION AND INVOCATION. 

liturgical significance, and are used in the New Testa- 
ment with reference to an appointed service (St. Luke 
1 : 23 ; Heb. 9 : 21 ; 8:2), it is certainly probable 
that he was recalling the words of the liturgy in which 
he had ministered, and which were familiar to the 
Eoman and Corinthian Christians. If one should say 
of any subject on which he may have discoursed, 
" Mark, learn, and inwardly digest this," we should 
at once understand that he was quoting the words of 
the Second Collect for the Advent season. And it is 
equally obvious when St. Paul uses these words of the 
liturgy, which prevailed in that portion of the Church 
which he served, that he was using familiar words, 
which would be recognized at once as having come 
from their common service and which they constantly 
heard. 

This line of argument then would seem to prove 
that the foundation of the liturgy was laid at Jerusa- 
lem before the dispersion of the apostles. The lit- 
urgy, the form of the Christian service, which was to 
be rendered unto God, and which was to express 
Christian thought and acts of Christian redemption, 
did not come until the churches were planted and had 
attained a growth. The prayers and the breaking of 
the bread would come with the doctrine and the fel- 
lowship. The Christian service, the Christian lit- 
urgy, we must suppose, was provided for at the begin- 
ning ; and that we have to-day the nucleus at least 
of that service which was appointed and used by the 



IIISTOR Y OF OBLA TION AND INVO CA TIOJST. 25 

apostles. Thus, as Hooker said,* " if the liturgies of 
all ancient churches throughout the world be com- 
pared among themselves, it may easily be perceived 
that they all had one original mould. " 

* Hooker, Eccl. Pol., Bk. 5, ch. 25. 



PART FIRST. 



THE OBLATION. 

" For as often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do 
show the Lord's death till He come." — 1 Corinthians 11 : 26. 



CHAPTEE I. 
The Oblation ibt the Eomast Liturgy. 

I]sr treating of the oblation it is necessary to haye a 
distinct perception of the one which is involved. 
There are three oblations in the Eastern liturgies, in 
the Eoman rite, and in the Book of Common Prayer. 
In the Eastern liturgies the first oblation is the offer- 
ing of the bread and wine by the people to be used in 
the sacred office. The second oblation is the placing 
the elements on the altar. They are then called holy 
gifts, because they have been placed on the altar and 
offered to God to be used in the Eucharistic rite ; and 
the third oblation is the offering these gifts as the 
commemoration of the great act of the Eedeemer in 
the salvation of the world. 

There are the same three oblations in the Eoman 
rite. The first one is the oblation of these elements 
for the sacred purposes of worship, which is called 
the offertorium. The second is the placing them 
upon the altar, which begins in the ordinarium with 
the words Suscipe, Sancte Pater, and the bread then, 



30 OBLATION IN THE ROMAN LITURGY. 

before the great office of consecration begins, is called 
immaculatam hostiam. The third oblation is the 
offering of the bread and wine in commemoration, 
which begins with the words Unde et memories, the 
meaning and purport of which is the question now 
involved. 

In the American office there is observed the same 
order. The first oblation is the bread and wine which 
are placed upon the prothesis, and represent the obla- 
tion of the people. They are called oblations in the 
prayer for the whole state of Christ's Church mili- 
tant. Then, after the collection of money is made, 
the bread and the wine, which have stood on the 
prothesis, are taken, and with the alms are placed 
upon the altar and presented to God for the great act 
of worship. They are now offered to God, and cannot 
any more be used for common purposes. They can 
now be used only for the great Eucharistic rite, and 
are called, in the third oblation, as they are in the 
same place — before consecration — in the liturgy of 
St. James, these " holy gifts." The third oblation 
takes place when these holy gifts are offered in com- 
memoration of the acts of the Son of God in the re- 
demption of the world. 

The question which we now ask and discuss is this, 
What is it that the Church offers in this third or last 
oblation ? It is the question which was asked at the 
Eef ormation, before the Prayer-Book was compiled — 
asked in a circular sent to the bishops and some of 



OBLATION IN THE BOMAN LITURGY. 31 

the great doctors : " What is the oblation and sacrifice 
of Christ in the mass V 9 Cranmer and Eidley and 
the other bishops and Cox and other doctors answered 
it ; some as they inclined to the prevailing views, and 
others as they tended toward the Eeformation view. 
They were dogmatic answers not reasoned out. They 
will be introduced at another place. It is proposed here 
to find an answer in the words of the liturgy, and not 
simply in the teachings of the great doctors of the 
Church. What does the liturgy say, when the obla- 
tion is made, that we offer unto God ? 

This question is answered in three ways. There 
are three answers made to it. The first, that it is 
the Lord Jesus Christ that is offered. That is the 
distinct and unanimous answer of the Eoman Church. 
The second answer is that it is the body and blood of 
Christ that is offered. That is the general view of 
the Greek Church and of some Anglican divines. The 
third is that it is the sacramental body and blood in 
commemoration of the one and only offering of the 
cross. This is the view of most Anglicans, as will be 
shown from the Catena in the fifth chapter. 

The proper way to get an answer to this question 
is to investigate the words of the oblation. What do 
those words import ? There is an oblation made. 
What do the words, the language of the oblation, de- 
clare or signify, or what knowledge do they impart 
to us ? 

It is maintained that the language of the services in 



32 OBLATION IN THE ROMAN LITURGY. 

liturgical books should guide us. Those words must 
be taken in their natural sense. We must understand 
them according to the natural import of language. 
The theories and doctrines of theologians are not to 
rule and give meaning to the words of the service, but 
the words of the service are to express the significa- 
tion of the acts. If we wish to know what the act is, 
what it means and imports, we must study the words 
by which the act is set forth. 

This was insisted on in the Gorham controversy. 
It was maintained that the words of the baptismal 
office exhibited and declared what the act was, that 
we must take those words in their natural sense in order 
to understand what has been done in administering 
the sacrament of baptism. It is only through lan- 
guage that we can understand the act. If the lan- 
guage of the service does not express it, then we must 
use other language which will express it. It is the 
act as originally instituted that we wish to under- 
stand. We interpret the language as it was adopted 
originally to set forth the act, and as it has been used 
in the Church since to express the meaning of the 
act. The baptismal office may be reduced to the 
sacred words with the action of water, but the service 
adopted expresses the signification of the sacrament. 
The service is interpreted not by the opinions of the 
doctors of the Church, but by the natural meaning 
of the words themselves. The baptismal office in the 
Prayer-Book exhibits the mind of the Church, and 



OBLATION IN THE ROMAN LITURGY. 33 

shows what she intends when she performs the act. 
The meaning of the rite depends upon the interpreta- 
tion of the language of the service. All this was 
brought out clearly in the Gorham controversy. The 
meaning did not depend on the views which Bishop 
Philpots put on the service or the meaning on which 
Mr. Gorham insisted, but it all turned on the in- 
terpretation of the language of the office ; and the 
value of the decision of the court depended only on 
the correct interpretation of the office. 

"We must deal in the same manner with the Eucha- 
ristic office. There are certain acts performed and 
certain words uttered. Those words must give ex- 
pression to the meaning of the act. The words and 
the acts must be in harmony. They must both point 
to the same signification. The acts signify some- 
thing ; the words, to be of any value, must express 
that signification arid no other. What we wish to get 
at is the act itself — what it is, what it imports. And 
words are the only medium by which we can get this. 

The language of the Eoman liturgy dates from the 
fifth century. It is at least as old as that date. The 
Canon of the Mass — that is, the portion which imme- 
diately precedes and follows the sacred words, the 
oblation, and the invocation has come down from a 
remote antiquity ; and we therefore do not, as we 
would anticipate that we should not, find any tran- 
substantiation in the text, or in consequence any 
offering of Christ as the oblation. 



34 OBLATION IN THE ROMAN LITURGY. 

The more direct way to get at the meaning of the 
oblation in the Koman liturgy will be to inquire what 
is the doctrine of the Eoman Church on this subject. 
What does the Eoman Church believe and teach about 
the presence of Christ and the offering of Christ, and 
then to compare this belief and teaching with the 
language of the service, and to inquire whether they 
accord — whether the doctrine as thus set forth is a 
correct expression of the significancy of the acts. 

The doctrine of the Eoman Church is this : That 
the Son of God, Jesus Christ, is produced on the 
altar, and that He is the object which is offered to 
the Father in the act called the oblation. Thus in 
the creed of Pius IV. there is the following, which is 
the universally acknowledged doctrine of the Eoman 
Church : ' ' I profess that in the mass there is offered 
to God a true, proper, and propitiatory sacrifice for 
the living and the dead, and that in the most holy 
sacrament of the Eucharist there is truly, really, and 
substantially the body and blood, together with the 
soul and divinity, of our Lord Jesus Christ ; and that 
there is wrought a conversion of the whole substance 
of the bread into the body, and of the whole substance 
of the wine into the blood ; which conversion the 
Catholic Church calls transubstantiation." From 
this proposition, that ' ' in the mass there is offered to 
God a true, proper, and propitiatory sacrifice for the 
living and the dead," and also from this " that Christy 
body and blood, soul and divinity, that whole Christ 



OBLATION IN TEE ROMAN LITURGY. 35 

is in the Eucharist," it must follow that whole Christ 
is again offered to God as a propitiatory sacrifice for 
the sins of man. The Council of Trent* says : " In 
this Divine sacrifice which is performed in the mass, 
that same Christ is contained and immolated in a 
bloodless manner who once offered Himself in a 
bloody manner on the altar of the cross/ 5 The Cate- 
chismf of the Council of Trent says : "If with pure 
hearts and a lively faith, and with a sincere sorrow 
foi past transgressions, we immolate and offer in sac- 
rifice this most holy victim, we shall no doubt receive 
from the Lord ' mercy and grace in seasonable aid.' " 
The account which the theologians of the Church 
of Eome give of the mass is in accordance with this. 
Thus BossuetJ says : " It cannot be doubted but that 
this action . . . places before Him [the Almighty 
Father] His only Son, under the signs of that death by 
which He was appeased. All Christians confess that 
the presence only of Jesus Christ is a mode of inter- 
cession, most powerful before God, for the whole 
human race, according to the saying of the apostle, 
that Jesus Christ presents Himself and appears before 
the face of God ; so we believe that Jesus Christ, 
present on the holy table, in the figure of death, in- 
tercedes for us, and represents continually to His 
Father the death which He suffered for His Church." 

* Session xxii., chap. 2. f Page 195. 

X Bossuet's Exposition de la Doctrine de l'Eglise Catholique 
sur les Matieres de Controverse, chap. 14. 



36 OBLATION IN THE ROMAN LITURGY. 

Moehler* expresses himself in similar terms : " The 
decisive, conscious, undoubting faith that Christ be- 
fore our eyes offers Himself up for us to His Eternal 
Father, is quite calculated to produce an effect pierc- 
ing into the inmost heart of man." Bishop England, f 
in his Preface to his " Translation of the Mass/' uses 
the same language : " In the mass Jesus Christ is the 
victim. He is produced by the consecration, which 
by the power of God, and the institution of the Ee- 
deemer, and the act of the priest places the body and 
blood of Christ, under the appearance of bread and 
wine, upon the altar ; then the priest makes an obla- 
tion of this victim to the Eternal Father in behalf of 
the people." Again he says that the acts of the 
mass " are the producing of the victim upon the 
altar, and offering Him to God for our sins after 
He has been produced." The Ursuline Manual J uses 
this language : " In the mass Jesus Christ is our vic- 
tim ; the priest makes an oblation of this victim to 
the Eternal Father in behalf of all men." 

The question, then, for our consideration is this, 
whether the words of the service suppose Jesus Christ 
to have been produced on the altar, and that He is 
there offered in sacrifice, or as an oblation to the Al- 
mighty Father. When words are used for the pur- 
pose of making an oblation, or when a service is con- 

* Moeliler's Symbolism, chap. 4, sec. 34. 

f Bishop England's Translation, Preface, pp. x. and xxiii. 

X Page 77. 



OBLATIOX IX TEE ROM AX LITURGY. 37 

structed to express this act, there must be in the 
mind of the compiler a certain view. He must have 
an opinion whether the oblation is the presenting 
Christ Himself, or the body and blood of Christ, or a 
memorial of Christ. He could not think one thing 
and say another. He must have in his mind a cer- 
tain doctrine or belief. If the one who committed to 
paper the Canon of the Mass thought that Jesus 
Christ was produced by the words, Hoc est Corpus 
meum and Hie est enim calix sanguinis mei, etc., 
and if he thought that the whole substance of the 
bread was converted into the body of Christ, and that 
the whole substance of the wine was converted into 
the blood of Christ, and if he thought that whole 
Christ — soul, body, and divinity — was then produced 
upon the altar, would he not have used language to 
express this thought, this view, this doctrine ? Do 
the words of the service correspond with this doc- 
trine ? In the oblation which follows, does the priest 
make an offering of the Son as the Eedeemer of the 
world unto the Almighty Father ? This is what 
Bishop England says the acts of the mass are, pro- 
ducing Christ on the altar, and offering Him in sacri- 
fice. Is there such an offering in the mass ? Does 
the priest use words that say or imply that he is offer- 
ing the Son of God, that he is making an oblation of 
Him ? 

Now the words of the mass are these. The words 
of the oblation come after the words of institution ; 



38 OBLATION IN THE ROMAN LITURGY. 

just as in the Book of Common Prayer tliey follow 
the sacred words, when the Roman bishops and doc- 
tors maintain that the victim has been produced and 
is now offered : " Wherefore, Lord, we, Thy ser- 
vants, and also Thy holy people, having in remem- 
brance both the blessed passion of the same Christ 
our Lord, as also His resurrection from the dead, and 
likewise His triumphant ascension into heaven, offer 
unto Thy glorious majesty of Thine own gifts and 
presents a pure host, a holy host, an immaculate host, 
the holy bread of eternal life and the* cup of everlast- 
ing salvation, upon which {supra quce) vouchsafe to 
look wi£h a propitious and serene countenance, and 
accept them as Thou wast pleased graciously to accept 
the gifts of Thy righteous servant Abel, the sacrifice 
of our patriarch Abraham, and the holy sacrifice, the 
immaculate host which Thy high priest Melchisedec 
offered to Thee. We humbly beseech Thee, Al- 
mighty God, command those things (hcec) to be carried 
by the hands of Thy holy angel unto Thy high altar," 
etc. 

This word hostia is used both before and after the 
oblation. In the offertorium, where there is no dis- 
pute about the nature of the elements, they are called 
immaculatam hostiam ; and the offering of Melchise- 
dec is also called in the latter part of the prayer of 
oblation, after the offering is made, immaculatam 
hostiam. It is impossible that in these two cases the 
hostia should refer to Christ produced upon the altar, 



OBLATION IN THE ROMAN LITURGY. 39 

so it cannot refer to Christ in the oblation, for .after- 
ward that liostia is twice called these things, which 
can alone refer to the elements of bread and wine.* 

The words of the Koman liturgy do not then sus- 
tain the doctrine of the Council of Trent, of the Cate- 
chism of Trent, or of Bishop England and of the 
Ursuline Manual. There is no reference in any of 
the prayers of the mass to the offering of Christ, as 
He is produced on the altar, for the sins of the world. 
There is not a sentence which declares that Christ is 
the oblation. The language of the mass corresponds 
with the language of the Greek liturgies, with some 
exceptions in the invocation. The Koman liturgy has 

* The Rev. William Maskell, M.A., in " The Ancient Lit- 
urgy of the Church of England according to the Uses of 
Sarum, Bangor, York, Hereford, and the Modern Roman 
Liturgy," says as follows : " If the crosses are a difficulty, 
much more is the prayer, ' Supra quce propitio,' which follows 
irreconcilable with the dogma of transubstantiation. An- 
ciently matters were not so ; and before such novelties were 
introduced into the faith of the Church, one part of her ser- 
vice harmonized with another, and there was no need, as the 
Roman doctors now cannot but acknowledge, to explain away 
any prayer that it might not contradict openly statements 
to which she had unadvisedly been committed. No longer, 
as once they could, can those branches of the Catholic Church 
which are in communion with Rome point boldly to their 
liturgy, and say that the prayers, and the ceremonies, and ob- 
servances which it contains are to be interpreted in an honest 
acceptation and in their ancient and true meaning. " Note 
on the oblation in the Canon of the Mass, p. 98. 



40 OBLATION IN THE ROMAN LITURGY. 

the sacred words, the ohlation, and what may be in- 
tended for the invocation. The prayer does not con- 
tain the name of the Holy Ghost, which is distinctly 
mentioned in other liturgies, bat there is the petition 
that " as many of us as by this participation of the 
altar shall receive the most sacred body and blood of 
Thy Son, may be replenished with all heavenly bene- 
diction and grace through the same Christ our Lord." 

It is also 10 be observed that the rubric declares 
that the mention of the sacred words with the manipu- 
lation constitutes the consecration, and in accordance 
with this the priest adores the elements and presents 
them to the people for adoration ; but in the language 
of the mass which follows this no recognition of this 
act is made, but in the words of the prayers which fol- 
low the elements are spoken of as elements still. 

The incongruity of the doctrine of the Eoman 
Church with the words of the oblation in the mass 
has not escaped the observation of theologians both 
Anglican and Eoman. Bishop Hall* says : ' 4 The Bo- 
manists take upon them to crucify and sacrifice again ; 
and while they solemnly offer the Son of God up unto 
His Father, they humbly beseech Him . . . that He 
would be pleased to bless and accept that oblation." 
Brettf says that " the prayers in the Canon of the 
Mass no more favor transubstantiation than the prayer 

* Bishop Hairs Works, vol. x., p. 387. 
f Dr. Thomas Brett's Collection of the Principal Liturgies 
with Dissertation, sec. 18. 



OBLATION IN THE ROMAN LITURGY. 41 

in the established liturgy of the Church of England. " 
So Bingham* says : " The words in this prayer, as 
our polemical writers have rightly observed, were 
used before transubstantiation was invented, and when 
the consecration was thought to be made by prayer, 
and not barely by pronouncing the words, * This is 
My body y and then they were good sense, when said 
over bread and wine to consecrate them into the me- 
morial and symbols of Christ's body and blood. But 
now they are become absurd and contrary to primitive 
intention ; for how can the real body and blood of 
Christ be called these gifts, or be compared to the 
sacrifice of Abel, who offered a beast ? How can man 
pray, without indignity to the Son of God, that the 
sacrifice of God's only Son may be as acceptable to 
God as the sacrifice of Abel was ? Or how does 
Christ, who sits at the right hand of the Father, need 
the mediation of angels to be carried or presented to 
His Father at the heavenly altar ? With what pro- 
priety of speech can Christ be called all these good 
things, and the good things which God createth 
always, and quickeneth and sanctifieth always ? Doth 
God create, and quicken, and bless Jesus Christ by 
Jesus Christ ? It is proper to say this of the gifts, 
supposing them to be real bread and wine, but alto- 
gether improper if they are transubstantiated into the 
natural flesh and blood of Christ/' Dr. Puseyf says : 

* Bingham's Origines, Book 15, cap. 3, sec. 30. 
f The Real Presence, p. 18. 



42 OBLATION IN THE BOM AN LITUBGY. 

" The words, however, ' these things/ must surely 
mean those same offerings upon which God has been 
prayed graciously to look ; the memorials of the death 
and passion of our Lord, whereby we plead to God 
that same sacrifice on the cross which He, our great 
High Priest and Intercessor, pleadeth unceasingly in 
heaven in that glorified body which still bears (what 
exceeding glory) the marks of His passion. I agree 
with Mr. Goode that this language in its obvious 
sense is inconsistent with the doctrine of transub- 
stantiation, both because the word ' bread ' is still 
used after consecration (and that as ' God's own dona- 
tions and gifts '), and that the offering is compared 
with the material offerings of the patriarchs, which 
would not be natural if nothing material remained. " 
Cardinal Bona* gives the objection of Cabasilas at the 
Council of Florence : ' * And what is this prayer ? 
Command these things to he carried up in the hand of 
the angel to Thy supercelestial altar ; for let them say 
what is the meaning of this, let the gifts be carried 
up? For they either pray for a local transition of 
them from earth and these lower regions into heaven, 
or else that they may receive some worthy change 
from a more humble to a higher state, . . . whence 
it is manifest that they very well know that they are 
still but bread and wine, which have not yet received 
the sanctification, and therefore they pray for them as 

* Quoted by Brett from Bona de Reb. Liturg., chap. 2, cap. 
13. Waddington's History of the Church, chap. 26. 



OBLATION IN THE ROMAN LITURGY, 43 

hitherto needing prayers." The Eoman theologians 
find it difficult to harmonize the words of the oblation 
with their doctrine. Floras,* on the Canon of the 
Mass, says that l ' these words are difficult to be un- 
derstood. " Innocent III. explains these words, com- 
mand these things to he carried, to be the prayers of 
the faithful ; but what reference has there been made 
to the prayers of the faithful ? The subject of the 
oblation and of this prayer is these things — hcec. 

It must also be remembered that the text of >the 
Canon of the Mass is of more ancient date than the 
doctrine of transubstantiation. The controversy 
about the nature of the offering and the effect of 
consecration began a.d. 818, but the doctrine was 
under dispute, and not put into shape and received 
until two hundred years, in 1018. The Canon of 
the Mass before this period and during the years of 
controversy and since that period has continued the 
same. The words of the mass express a doctrine 
which was the doctrine of the Church before any such 
definition was made. The history of the opinion 
shows that the liturgy of the Eoman Church expressed 
no such change as that expressed by Bishop England, 
nor do its words indicate any such offering in the 
oblation. The Canon of the Mass was evidently con- 
structed on a theory which we call the doctrine of the 
Catholic Church ; and therefore both from its date 
and from the doctrine prevailing when it was com- 

* Quoted by Pusey's Real Presence, p. 18. 



44 OBLATION IN THE ROMAN LITURGY. 

piled we should not expect to find, and do not find, 
any such doctrine in the service as that of transub- 
stantiation. 

The doctrine, then, which is taught in the Roman 
Church, that the Saviour Jesus Christ is by consecra- 
tion placed on the altar, and that He is there offered 
in sacrifice by the oblation, is not sustained by the 
language of the oblation. It is an exceedingly un- 
natural interpretation to put upon the words. It 
must be obvious, then, from the words themselves 
that the one who composed the oblation did not in- 
tend to express such an act. 



CHAPTER II. 

The Oblatiok m the Greek Liturgies. 

Another opinion which is extensively held is, that 
the sacred words convert the elements into the body 
and blood of Christ, and that in the oblation they are 
offered unto the Eternal Father. 

It must be kept in mind that the only question 
now before us is, What is it that we offer in the obla- 
tion ? what do the words imply that we place before 
God ? It is not the opinions of theologians that is 
to guide us. Their testimony may be of importance, 
and it may be sought and brought forward, but the 
question now is, What do the words imply ? Who do 
we say in the words of the service is offered ? The 
words give expression to the opinion of the Church, 
and our inquiry is, What do those words imply ? 
what do they declare and express ? It is held, and 
probably rightly held, that the action does not depend 
on the words, but that the action has a significancy 
in itself. Placing them on the holy table they sig- 
nify something. And what they signify, that it is 
that the Church tries to express in words. And now 
we are trying to get at the meaning of those words. 
We wish to remove all ambiguity, and to see just what 



46 OBLATION IN THE GREEK LITUBGIES. 

such words signify, and that we must take to be the 
meaning of the act. 

Let us quote the words of the oblation in the prin- 
cipal Greek liturgies, and see what is the plain and 
natural meaning of those words, what is the meaning 
which we should put upon them if our minds were 
entirely relieved from any opinions obtained from 
theological writers. 

We begin with the liturgy of St. James, which is 
supposed to be the tradition at least of the original 
apostolic liturgy. It was used at Jerusalem and after- 
ward at Cesarea. This in its principal parts is prob- 
ably the oldest liturgy in Christendom, and it may 
possibly have undergone less change than any other 
one that was in use. It came under the influence of 
the great Basil, and was changed and amended in 
words and phrases, but not in its essential parts. 
Those, as was said in the Introduction, were in use 
from the beginning. It can be traced back to within 
two hundred years of the apostles, when men then 
living were in communication with those who had 
seen the apostles. Our knowledge of it thus reaches 
up to the origin of the Christian Church. The obla- 
tion is in these words : 

" Wherefore, having in remembrance His life-giving pas- 
sion, salutary cross, death, burial, and resurrection on the 
third day from the dead, His ascension into heaven and sit- 
ting at the right hand of Thee, His God and Father, and His 
second bright and terrible appearance, when He shall come 



OBLATION IN THE GREEK LITURGIES. 47 

again with glory to judge the living and the dead, and shall 
render to every man according to his works ; we sinners offer 
to Thee, O Lord, this tremendous and unbloody sacrifice, be- 
seeching Thee not to deal with us after our sins, nor reward 
us according to our iniquities. " 

That this unusual and exalted language refers to 
the "creatures of bread and wine" is obvious from, 
what follows, for the celebrant proceeds to say : 

" Send down, O Lord, this Thy most Holy Spirit upon us 
and upon these Thy gifts, here set before Thee, that by His 
holy, good, and gracious presence He may sanctify and make 
this bread the holy body of Thy Christ, and this cup the 
precious blood of Thy Christ/ ' 

It was not, therefore, called the u tremendous and 
unbloody sacrifice" because it was the offering of 
Christ, or of the body and blood of Christ, for the 
language immediately following does not justify that 
interpretation. There is no doubt that language be- 
gan early to be used by some of the great doctors of 
the Church, which implied that Christ or that Christ's 
body and blood were offered. This teaching or ex- 
pression no doubt influenced the revisers when this 
expression was introduced into the liturgy of St. 
James. That the expression does not harmonize with 
the language which follows, and that it differs from 
other great liturgies, and especially from that of 
Clement, shows that such words and expressions were 
the result of the progress of opinion, which became 
extremely prevalent in the Church, and which in the 



48 OBLATION IN THE GREEK LITURGIES. 

eleventh century culminated, in the West, in the 
doctrine of transubstantiation. 

The liturgy of St. Mark, used at Alexandria, is pos- 
sibly next in antiquity to that of St. James. There 
are visible changes, and introductions, and amend- 
ments made in this liturgy — changes such as we see 
were made in the liturgy of St. James. The oblation 
is made in the following form : 

" Showing forth, therefore, O Lord Almighty, Heavenly 
King, the death of Thy only begotten Son, our Lord, our God, 
and Saviour Jesus Christ ; and confessing His blessed resur- 
rection from the dead on the third day, His ascension into 
heaven, and His session at the right hand of Thee, His God 
and Father ; and also looking for His second terrible and 
dreadful appearance, when He shall come in righteousness to 
judge both the quick and the dead, and to render to every 
man according to his works, we, O Lord God, have set before 
Thee Thine own out of Thine own gifts.' ' 

"We may compare these with the liturgy of St. 
Clement. This liturgy was not used in any church, 
but is an exhibition of the services of the Church as 
they prevailed in the beginning of the third century. 
It probably more nearly shows what the worship of 
the Church was than any other liturgy. The others 
were in use, and therefore liable to alteration ; and 
then they were amended and enriched according to 
the notions and opinions which sprang up in tha 
Church. But the liturgy ascribed to St. Clement was 
written certainly in the first part of the third cen* 



OBLATION IN TEE GREEK LITURGIES.] 49 

tury, and has come down to us probably in its orig- 
inal language and original form. It shows us, there- 
fore, what was the form of the oblation in the latter 
part of the second century, and probably in the two 
centuries which succeed the apostolic age. The obla- 
tion is made in these words : 

" When having in remembrance the passion, death, and 
resurrection from the dead, His return into heaven, and His 
future second appearance, when He shall come with glory and 
power to judge the quick and the dead, and to render to every 
man according to his works, we offer to Thee, our King and 
our God, according to His institution, this bread and this cup, 
giving thanks to Thee, through Him, that Thou hast thought 
us worthy to stand before Thee and to sacrifice unto Thee." 

The oblation in the liturgy of St. Chrysostora, 
which is the prevailing use in the Eastern and Eus- 
sian Church, is in the following words : 

" We, therefore, remembering this salutary precept and all 
that happened in our behalf, the cross, the tomb, the resur- 
rection on the third day, the ascension into heaven, the session 
on Thy right hand, the second and glorious coming again in 
behalf of all and for all, we offer Thee Thine own out of Thine 
own ; moreover, we oiler unto Thee this reasonable and un- 
bloody sacrifice ; and we beseech, and pray, and supplicate 
Thee to send down Thy Holy Ghost upon us and upon these 
gifts lying before Thee." 

In the liturgy of St. Basil, which is the amended 
form of the liturgy of St. James, the oblation is as 
follows : 

" VTherefore we also, Lord, having in remembrance those 



50 OBLATION IN THE GREEK LITURGIES. 

things which He suffered for our salvation, His life-giving 
cross, His lying in the grave for three days, His resurrection 
from the dead, His ascension into heaven, His session at the 
right hand of Thee, His God and Father, and His glorious and 
terrible second appearance, through all and in all, offer to 
Thee Thine own out of Thine own gifts, . . . and laying be- 
fore Thee these symbols (ret, avTcrviza) of the holy body and 
blood of Thy Christ/' etc. 

In the liturgy of St. Basil, which is used in the 
Patriarchate of Alexandria, the oblation is thus made : 

" In memory, therefore, of His most holy sufferings, His 
resurrection from the dead, His ascension into heaven, His sit- 
ting down at the right hand of Thee, His God and Father, 
and His glorious and terrible second appearance, we for all, 
through all, and in all offer to Thee Thine own gifts/' 

The Mosarabic liturgy, which was in use in Spain 
until the eleventh century, and was no doubt brought 
from Africa, has the oblation in these words : 

'• We, O Lord, observing these, Thy gifts and precepts, lay 
upon Thine altar the sacrifice of bread and wine, beseeching 
the most profound goodness of Thy mercy, that the holy and 
undivided Trinity may sanctify these hosts by the same 
Spirit," etc. 

Placing here the oblation which is in the Ameri- 
can book, we shall be able to see that our form of 
oblation, though it came to us from the Scotch book, 
was yet introduced into that office from the Greek 
liturgies. No doubt it was the result of the profound 
study of patristic theology and of the Eastern lit- 
urgies by Anglican divines in the time of Archbishop 



OBLATION IN THE GREEK LITURGIES. 51 

Laud. He was not the author or compiler of the lit- 
urgy for the Scotch Church, yet it was submitted to 
his inspection and criticism. It stands in our book 
as follows : 

" Wherefore, O Lord and Heavenly Father, according to 
the institution of Thy dearly beloved Son, our Saviour Jesus 
Christ, we, Thy humble servants, do celebrate and make here 
before Thy Divine Majesty, with these thy holy gifts, which 
we now offer unto Thee, the memorial Thy Son hath com- 
manded us to make ; having in remembrance His blessed pas- 
sion and precious death, His mighty resurrection and glorious 
ascension, render unto Thee most hearty thanks for the in- 
numerable benefits procured unto us by the same." 

Let us now look particularly at the words which 
are used, and judge whether they make an offering 
of the body and blood of Christ. There is no word 
or sentence which indicates such an offering. There 
is no liturgy nor a sentence in any liturgy which says, 
" We offer and present unto Thee the body and blood 
of Thy Son. Look propitiously upon it as Thou 
didst look upon the sacrifice of Thy righteous servant 
Abel." The liturgies are unanimous in the use of a 
form and language ; but this form and language do 
not say or imply that the Church is making an offer- 
ing upon the altar of the body and blood of the Son 
of God, much less of the Son Himself. In the lit- 
urgy of Clement, i ' We offer to Thee this bread and 
this cup/' In the liturgy of St. Mark, " We set 
before Thee Thine own out of Thine own gifts." In 



52 OBLATION IN THE GREEK LITURGIES. 

St. Basil's, "Laying before Thee these symbols of 
the holy body and blood of Thy Christ/' In the lit- 
urgy of the Patriarchate of Alexandria, " We . . . 
offer to Thee Thine own out of Thine own gifts. . . . 
Send down upon us, Thy servants, and upon these 
gifts lying before Thee Thy Holy Spirit." In the 
Mosarabic liturgy, " We . . . lay upon Thine altar 
the sacrifice of bread and wine." And in the Prayer- 
Book of the American Church, Ci We celebrate and 
make here before Thy Divine Majesty, with these 
Thy holy gifts, which we now offer unto Thee, the 
memorial Thy Son hath commanded, us to make." 

It would appear to be plain, then, that the offering 
is " bread and wine," that it is " the gifts and pres- 
ents'' of the Creator, that it is " these holy gifts," 
made holy by being offered in the second oblation for 
sacred use. We may certainly regard it as singular 
that if the composer or compiler of a liturgy meant 
the Church to make, or supposed that the Church 
made an offering of the body and blood of Christ, he 
did not use words to express that act. We insist that 
when we are directed to say in the baptismal office, 
" Seeing now that this child is regenerate and grafted 
into the body of Christ's Church," that we mean that 
this child is born again — that it is introduced the sec- 
ond time into life — into the spiritual and new life. 
We contrast this spiritual life with the natural life. 
This is the obvious and natural meaning of the ex- 
pression regeneration. So in the liturgy, when we offer 



OBLATION IN THE GREEK LITURGIES. 53 

this bread and this cup ; when we present these gifts, 
these holy gifts, these symbols of the body and blood 
of Christ ; and when we pray afterward in the invo- 
cation that they may be made unto us (ut nobis Cor- 
pus . . . fiat) the body and blood of Christ, or that 
u we receiving these creatures of bread and wine" (so 
called after the oblation), may be made partakers of 
the body and blood of Christ, we might say that there 
is almost a studied caution to avoid any mode of ex- 
pression which might imply that which the symbols 
indicated. 

The only one which differs in this respect from the 
other liturgies is that of Edward VI. In this the in- 
vocation is placed first, before the words of institu- 
tion, and the oblation comes in the third place. Thus 
it says : 

" Hear us, O merciful Father, we beseech Thee, and with 
Thy Holy Spirit and word vouchsafe to bless and sanctify 
these Thy gifts and creatures of bread and wine, that they 
may be unto us the body and blood of Thy most dearly be- 
loved Son Jesus Christ, who in the same night that He was 
betrayed took bread, and when He had blessed and given 
thanks, He brake it and gave it to His disciples, saying, Take, 
eat, this is My body, which is given for you ; do this in re- 
membrance of Me. 

" Likewise after supper He took the cup, and when He had 
given thanks, He gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of this, 
for this is My blood of the New Testament, which is shed for 
you and for many for the remission of sin ; do this as oft as 
ye shall drink of it in remembrance of Me. 

" Wherefore, O Lord and Heavenly Father, according to 



54 OBLATION IN THE GREEK LITURGIES. 

the institution of Thy dearly beloved Son, our Saviour Jesus 
Christ, we, Thy humble servants, do celebrate and make here 
before Thy Divine Majesty, with these Thy holy gifts, the 
memorial which Thy Son hath asked us to make," etc. 

Of this change, in the order of the three great acts 
of the liturgy, Brett* writes as follows : " That lit- 
urgy has not herein exactly followed primitive an- 
tiquity, and comes too near the Canon of the Mass, 
where this prayer for the Divine benediction, to sanc- 
tify the bread and wine, precedes the words of insti- 
tution contrary to all other liturgies of the Christian 
Church, whether in the East or West, . . . and that 
prayer was always placed in the last place to complete 
and perfect the consecration, and not to begin it as 
in the Koman Canon and the first liturgy of King 
Edward." 

Possibly the prayer which precedes the sacred words 
in the mass is not the invocation. There is a differ- 
ence of opinion whether we are to regard the one that 
precedes the words of institution, or the one that fol- 
lows the oblation as answering to the invocation. In 
neither of them is the Holy Ghost named as He is in 
the invocation in the Book of Common Prayer and in 
the Eastern liturgies. Eenaudot has maintained that 
this is the proper place for it. So it would be in a 
service which regards the offering of Christ's body 

* A Collection of the Principal Liturgies used by the Chris- 
tian Church, with a Dissertation upon Them, by Thomas 
Brett, LL.D., p. 159. 



OBLATIOX IX THE GREEK LITURGIES. 55 

and blood as the oblation ; but this great liturgical 
writer has given no example of one which thus places 
the invocation. This, however, cannot be said of the 
liturgy of Edward VL Then, in the prayer which 
precedes the words of institution, there is the same 
form of invocation which there is in the American 
book, that " God by His Holy Spirit and word would 
vouchsafe to bless and sanctify these creatures of 
bread and wine, that they be unto us the most blessed 
body and blood." 

It is also worthy of observation that it is a prayer 
that the elements may be made unto us the body and 
blood of Christ, which would seem, and it has been 
so maintained by many Anglican writers, that the 
blessing is limited to the participation. 

But that such a prayer precedes the oblation does 
not show that the elements are changed into the reali- 
ties by the one and simple prayer, for the language in 
which the oblation is made does not agree with this. 
There is still on this supposition the incongruity of 
language, which nothing will remove but understand- 
ing them in their plain and natural sense as the sacred 
elements, the holy gifts. 

It must be maintained, then, that there is no offer- 
ing of Christ, or of Christ's body and blood, in the 
Eucharistic oblation. 



CHAPTEK III. 

What is Offered ik the Oblation. 

It has been found that according to the words of 
the oblation we do not offer Christ, and that we do 
not offer His body and blood. The words of the ser- 
vice do not convey any such meaning. The inquiry 
now is, What do we offer ? When we say in our lit- 
urgy, " We celebrate and make here before Thy Divine 
Majesty, with these Thy holy gifts, which we now 
offer unto Thee, the memorial Thy Son hath com- 
manded us to make;" when it was said in the lit- 
urgy of St. Clement, " We offer to Thee, our King 
and our God, according to His institution, this bread 
and this cup ;" what are the bread and the cup ? If 
they are not Christ, if they are not His body and His 
blood, what, then, are they ? Are they changed in 
their nature so that in any sense they are no longer 
what they appear to be ? What, then, are they ? 
They are in their elements and in their nature, in 
their substance and in their accidents, bread and wine ; 
but in their purport, in what they signify, and in the 
relations in which they stand they serve a different 
purpose from what they did when they were used for 



WHAT IS OFFERED IJSf THE OBLATION. 57 

the common purposes of life. Justin Martyr* says 
that the elements are no longer used for H ordinary 
food/* and Irenaeusf says that they are no longer 
1 * common food. ' f When they were such they were 
used to nourish the body only. 

The great object to be accomplished with the " holy 
gifts' • is to make an oblation of remembrance before 
God of the work of His Son in the redemption of the 
world. This is the universal language of the lit- 
urgies. However they may differ from each other, in 
this respect they are the same. The Soman mass 
says : " Having in remembrance both the blessed pas- 
sion of the same Thy Son, Christ our Lord, as also 
His resurrection from the dead, and His triumphant 
ascension unto the heavens, we offer unto Thy glorious 
Majesty of Thine own gifts and presents." The lit- 
urgy of Clement says : M Having in remembrance His 
passion and resurrection from the dead, His return 
into heaven, and His future second appearance, when 
He shall come with glory and power to judge the 
quick and the dead, and to render to every man ac- 
cording to his works, we offer/' etc. In the liturgy 
of St. James : " Wherefore, having in remembrance 
His life-giving passion, salutary cross, death, burial 
and resurrection on the third day from the dead, His 
ascension into heaven, and sitting at the right hand 
of Thee, His God and Father, and His second bright 
and terrible appearance, when He shall come with 

* Apology, sec. 66. f Irenaeus, Book 4, sec. 5. 



58 WHAT IS OFFERED IN THE OBLATION. 

glory to judge the living and the dead, and shall ren- 
der to every man according to his works, we sinners 
offer to Thee, Lord," etc. In St. Chrysostom the 
words are as follows : " In remembrance, therefore, 
of this command of our Saviour, and all those things 
which He did for us, His cross, His burial, His resur- 
rection on the third day, His ascension into heaven, 
His sitting down at Thy right hand, and His second 
coming in great glory, we offer to Thee," etc. In 
St. Basil's liturgy the words are almost the same : 
" Wherefore we also, Lord, having in remembrance 
those things which He suffered for our salvation, His 
life-giving cross, His lying in the grave for three days, 
His resurrection from the dead, His ascension into 
heaven, His session at the right hand of Thee, His 
God and Father, and His glorious and terrible second 
appearance, through all and in all, we offer to Thee," 
etc. In the American book we say : " Having in re- 
membrance His blessed passion and precious death, 
His mighty resurrection and glorious ascension, render 
unto Thee most hearty thanks." This differs from 
the other liturgies only in the arrangement of the 
words. In our book the oblation is made first, and 
then there is the rehearsal of the great redemp- 
tive acts of the Son of God ; while in the other 
service books this order is reversed, and the acts 
of the Eedeemer are first made and then the ob- 
lation. But this in no respect alters the import of 
the offering. It is in each distinctly made in con- 



WHAT IS OFFERED IN THE OBLATION. 59 

nection with the memorial which is commanded to be 
made. 

The authority for this, for the institution of this 
memorial, is presented in most liturgies in the words 
of St. Paul. Thus in the liturgy of St. Clement, 
after the sacred words there are added the following : 
rt For as oft as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, 
ye do show My death until I come ; wherefore having 
in remembrance His passion, death, and resurrection 
from the dead." In the liturgy of St. James the 
words are : " For as often as ye eat this bread and 
drink this cup, ye do show the death of the Son of 
Man, and confess His resurrection until His coming 
again ; wherefore, having in remembrance," etc. In 
St. Mark's liturgy the same is quoted. " For as often 
as ye shall eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do 
show My death and confess My resurrection and ascen- 
sion till My coming again, showing forth therefore, 
Lord," etc. Nearly the same words are used in both 
the liturgies of St. Basil, while in the liturgies of St. 
Chrysostom, of Edward VI., and of the American 
Church the words of St. Paul are not quoted, 
but only the words of our Lord : " Do this in 
remembrance of Me." The words of St. Paul : 
u For as often as ye eat this bread and drink 
this cup, ye do show the Lord's death until He 
come," are thus distinctly introduced as the author- 
ity for the institution, for the oblation and memorial 
of the great acts of Christ on which His mediator- 



60 WHAT IS OFFEBED IN THE OBLATION. 

ship depended, and through which came our redemp- 
tion. 

This, then, is the real import of the oblation as ex- 
pressed in the words of the liturgies. It is a memo- 
rial of Christ's work as the Kedeemer of the world. 
It gives expression to what He did as the Son of God 
for our restoration to the 1'ather's favor. Thus Brett* 
says : " We make an oblation of the elements as the 
representative body and blood of Christ with a thank- 
ful remembrance of His death. " Thus Dr. Puseyf 
says: " It may be well ... to state briefly what 
that doctrine is, and what the Eomish corruption of 
it. The doctrine, then, of the early Church was this, 
that ' in the Eucharist an oblation or sacrifice was 
made by the Church to God under the form of His 
creatures of bread and wine, according to our Lord's 
holy institution, in memory of His cross and passion ' " 
(page 4). And again : " The subsequent Passovers 
were sacrifices commemorative of the first sacrifice, 
and so typical of the Eucharist, as commemorating 
and showing forth our Lord's sacrifice on the cross/' 
And again : ' ' They presented to the Almighty Father 
the symbols and memorials of the meritorious death 
and passion of His only begotten and well beloved 
Son, and besought Him by that precious sacrifice to 
look graciously upon the Church which He had pur- 
chased with His own blood, offering the memorials of 

* T. Brett, LL.D., Dissertation, etc., p. 137. 

f Oxford Tract, No. 82, by E. B. Pusey, D.D., pp. 4, 5. 



1VRAT IS OFFERED IN THE OBLATION. 61 

that same sacrifice which He, our great High Priest, 
made once for all, and now being entered withiu the 
veil, unceasingly presents before the Father, and the 
representation of which He has commanded us to 
make/' When a new liturgy for the Anglican Church 
was in contemplation this is one of the questions, 
among others, which was asked. In the winter of 
1548 a committee of bishops and learned presbyters 
was appointed to examine the offices. One of the set 
of questions which was sent out was this : " What is 
the oblation and sacrifice of Christ in the mass ?"* It 
was answered by the two archbishops, seventeen bish- 
ops, and two doctors. The answer of Cranmer was 
significant : " The oblation and sacrifice of Christ in 
the mass is so called not because Christ indeed is 
there offered and sacrificed by the priest and the people 
(for that was done but once by Himself upon the 
cross), but it is so called because it is a memory and 
representation of that very true sacrifice and immola- 
tion which before was made upon the cross." The 
Bishop of Lincoln answered : " There is properly no 
oblation nor sacrifice, but a remembrance of the one 
oblation of Christ upon the cross, made once for all." 
Dr. Cox, who had been a Fellow at Oxford, replied 
that " the oblation of the sacrifice in the mass is the 
prayer, the praise, the thanksgiving, and the remem- 

* The History of the Reformation of the Church of Eng- 
land, by Gilbert Burnett. To which is added a Collection of 
Records, Letters, etc. Part 2, Book 1, p. 208. 



62 WHAT IS OFFERED IN THE OBLATION. 

brance of Christ's passion and death. The Arch- 
bishop of York wrote that " the oblation and sacri^ 
fice Christ mentioned in the mass is a memorial of 
Christ's only sacrifice upon the cross once offered 
for men." Eidley says : "I am not able to say that 
the mass consisted by Christ's institution of other 
things than in those which He set forth in the evan- 
gelists Matthew, Mark, and Luke, in the Acts, and 
1 Cor. 10 and 11." 

These are the answers of those who were influenced 
by views in favor of reformation, and who wished for 
a change in the services ; but there were others who 
held to the views which had prevailed, and which 
they wished to prevail still. Thus six bishops joined 
in this one answer, " I think it is the presentation of 
the very body and blood of Christ, being really pres- 
ent in the sacrament ; which presentation the priest 
maketh at the mass in the name of the Church unto 
God the Father, in memory of Christ's passion and 
death upon the cross." The Bishop of Durham an- 
swered : " The oblation and sacrifice of Christ in the 
mass is the presenting Christ by the priest in com- 
memoration of His passion," etc. 

The answers of each party are somewhat singular. 
They do not refer to the words of the mass, and say 
that these words, in their natural meaning, declare, or 
that these words imply, that a memorial is made of 
Christ and His acts of redemption, but they simply 
say what they understand the mass to mean. Ridley 



WHAT IS OFFERED IN THE OBLATION. 63 

says that he understands the mass to be what our 
Lord meant in the words which are recorded in the 
Gospels and in the Epistle of St. Paul to the Corin- 
thians. But one would think that the question really- 
asked was this, what the words of the mass, and par- 
ticularly the words of the oblation, meant or indi- 
cated. The nearest to this is the answer of Cranmer. 
It appears to me that if a similar circular were to be 
addressed to the bishops and doctors of the American 
Church to-day, asking what we offered in the obla- 
tion, that they all would instinctively turn to the ser- 
vice, and would read and consider the words which 
they use on every celebration of that holy rite, and 
determine from those words what the oblation is — 
what it is that is offered. The oblation as expressed 
in the Prayer-Book would undergo an analysis and a 
scrutiny in order to get at its meaning ; and an at- 
tempt would be made to find out the exact import of 
the words — what was the meaning which they natu- 
rally conveyed. The doctrine which was taught, and 
which generally prevailed, might help to get at the 
meaning ; but the natural interpretation of the words 
would convey the meaning and determine the import 
of the act. If I mistake not, it is in this way that 
the baptismal rite is dealt with. Every one is held 
to the word regeneration because we declare every 
baptized infant to be regenerated, and so every one 
should be held to the words, " We do celebrate and 
make here before Thy Divine Majest}^, with these 



64 WHAT IS OFFERED IN THE OBLATION. 

Thy holy gifts, which we now offer unto Thee, the 
memorial Thy Son hath commanded us to make." 
If the offering is the Lord Jesus Himself, or if 
the offering is Christ's body and blood, they would 
expect to find that plainly expressed in the words ; 
and if they had not already determined their meaning 
and import, we should see hesitation and repeated 
readings of the service to determine their meaning. 

The controversy concerning the act of consecration 
came up in the Council of Florence in 1439, only a 
few years before the fall of Constantinople. A coun- 
cil had assembled at Ferrara in the interests of union 
between the Eastern and Western churches. It was 
adjourned to Florence. There had been scarcely a word 
of inquiry or of controversy on the subject of the Eucha- 
ristic rite, or of the mode and effect of the consecration 
of the elements. "When the terms of union came to be 
discussed there were not wanting violent partisans, 
who appear in every age and in every country of the 
world. John Turrecremata brought forward an ac- 
cusation against the Greek service. " To pray/' he 
said, ' ' after the words of institution that the ele- 
ments may become the body and blood of Christ, is to 
deny any transmuting efficacy in our Lord's own 
words. " The Latins made the act of adoration im- 
mediately after the words of institution. The Greeks 
were puzzled by the accusation, and without settling 
the controversy or even attempting to meet it, pro- 
claimed that they regarded our Lord's words with as 



WHAT IS OFFERED IJST THE OBLATION. 65 

much reverence as the Latins. Bessarion, the Arch- 
bishop of Kice, and five Greek prelates drew up a con- 
fession in accordance with the views of Turrecremata 
and the Latin Church. It was attempted to incor- 
porate it into the definition of faith about to be pro- 
mulgated by the council, but the Pope (Eugenius) re- 
fused to open again the controversy, and the definition 
was made without any reference to the point. It was 
afterward brought into controversy only by individual 
theologians.* 

Eenaudot endeavored to show that, notwithstand- 
ing the language of the Eastern liturgies, they were 
yet in agreement with the doctrine of the West ; and 
he explained it in this fashion, that the Eastern 
Church prayed " in more than one sacrament, after 
the form is complete, that the grace conferred by that 
form may be imparted ; as, for example, after a child 
is baptized, that it may be regenerate ; and after the 
marriage ceremony is completed, that the grace con- 
ferred by that sacrament may be conferred on the 
bride and bridegroom." It was also said that the 
prayer, " Make this bread the precious body of Thy 
Son," may mean nothing more than make this bread 
the precious body of Christ to us. Neal, in the 
" History of the Holy Eastern Church, " f says : " In- 
genious as these arguments may be, they cannot stand, 
... no reasoning can reconcile us to so palpable an 

* T. Brett, Dissertation concerning the Liturgies, pp. 142-52. 
f Vol. i., pp. 492-94. Also Gibbon, chap. 66. 



66 WHAT IS OFFEBED IN THE OBLATION. 

explaining away of plain words." In the Longer 
Catechism of the Russian Church the essential acts in 
consecration are declared to be " the utterance of the 
words which Jesus Christ spake in instituting the 
sacrament, . . . and after this the invocation of the 
Holy Ghost." And this is the teaching of the Ameri- 
can book, which says, in the rubric which is placed 
after ministering the cup, that "if the consecrated 
bread or wine be spent before all have communi- 
cated, the priest is to consecrate* more according to 
the form before prescribed" — that is, making use of 
the words of institution, the oblation, and the invo- 
cation, or, as the words of the rubric are, " beginning 

* Thorndike, in the chapter on the Consecration of the Ele- 
ments, says : " Coming now to consider wherein the consecra- 
tion of the Eucharist consists, I find no opinion on foot but 
that which hath taken possession by the authority of the 
school doctors ; that it is performed by the recital of these 
words, 'This is My body, this is My blood/ in the Canon 
(that is, the canonical or regular prayer for the consecration 
of the Eucharist) of the Mass." On this he has the following 
note : " Pmvalet tamen Tiodie opinio constituens in Ms solis 
verbis — Hoc est Corpus meum ; hie est sanguis meus — panis et 
vim consecrationem ; adeo ut Bellarminus, Vasquez, Becanus et 
alii, illam indigetent communem scholasticorum sententiam." 
Albertinus, De Euch., lib. 1, chap. 1, p. 7, having just quoted 
from Christopher de Fontium a list of seven different opin- 
ions held at various times on the point, " inter scriptores 
Catholicos." See Bellarmine, torn, ii., p. 832, D. 

Anglo-Catholic Library. Herbert Thorndike, on the Laws 
of the Church, lib. iii., chap. 4, p. 50. 



WHAT IS OFFERED IN THE OBLATION 67 

at, All glory be to Thee, Almighty God, and ending 
Avith these words, partakers of His most blessed body 
and blood" 

The import, then, of this great service is this. 
The elements are first an offering of the people. In 
the American rite they are placed on the prothesis, 
where they remain until a formal offering of them is 
made in the prayer for the whole state of Christ's 
Church militant, when they are placed upon the altar 
and offered to God. They are still nothing more 
than bread and wine, but they have a relative holiness 
because they are appropriated to be used for a holy 
purpose. They are by sacred acts and words to be 
offered as symbols and memorials of Christ in His 
work of redemption. To use the words of Pusey, by 
this act, this offering, this oblation we plead to God 
the great act of redemption once for all made upon 
the cross. It is after this that the subject of the real 
Presence comes into view, when we pray that the 
Holy Ghost may make them the body and blood of 
Christ to us in the reception and not in the offering, 
in the grace which they convey to us and not in what 
we present to God. 

Here probably is the mistake which has been made. 
When we have presented this bread and this cup to 
God, He, after the invocation, gives back to us the 
offering as the living bread which is to nourish our 
souls. It is after that we have presented the memo- 
rial of the great sacrifice that our souls are fed and 



68 WHAT IS OFFEBED IN THE OBLATION. 

nourished with the bread of eternal life, as it has 
become by the operation of the word and Holy Spirit. 
It is no production of Christ on the altar that we 
may offer Him to God, but it is God making our 
offering that bread. It is God now who makes it the 
feast and the sacrifice for us, when we may sit at His 
table and be nourished unto eternal life. 

This will require our attention when we come to 
consider the invocation. 

This part of the Eucharist has been called the 
Christian sacrifice. In this respect the Eucharist' is 
an act of worship rendered unto God, and it also 
becomes an instrument of grace. The oblation is the 
significant act of the one, and the invocation is the 
significant act of the other. Each of these acts has 
at times prevailed over the other. There are seasons 
in the Church when the attention has been almost ex- 
clusively directed to the one, and the other has been 
overlooked. We see this to-day. In the Eomish 
Church the Eucharist, as an act of worship, demands 
almost exclusive attention. To say mass ; to offer 
mass, is the general expression ; while with us it is 
to receive the communion ; to come to holy communion ; 
to celebrate the communion. These are the expres- 
sions of the Book of Common Prayer. In the early 
Church the two acts were combined in the names and 
in the attention, but one began to overshadow the 
other. The one received the attention to the exclu- 
sion of the other. Thus in the Eomish Church the 



WHAT IS OFFERED IN THE OBLATION. 69 

communion is generally administered only at long in- 
tervals — at Easter and Christmas ; while with us it is 
becoming almost universal to celebrate the communion 
on every Sunday morning, and in some places there 
is a daily celebration. Yet the great idea of oblation 
and sacrifice is rarely brought out prominently and the 
mind of the Church is not fastened on the act of wor- 
ship when we present these memorials of the cross and 
redemption. 

At the Eeformation this part of the Christian wor- 
ship was almost all that was attended. The great 
cathedrals of Europe were built with respect to this 
part of the Christian worship. The great building 
held the multitude of worshippers, but the voice of 
the celebrant could not be heard. As a priest once 
expressed it, it was like a great river supplied by nu- 
merous small rivulets. Each worshipper on his knees 
saying his private prayer was one of the rivulets, but 
the celebrant uttering the words of the mass was the 
instrument through which all the private prayers 
unite to make the great stream. This is quite pretty, 
but it is a one-sided view of worship. It was this 
which helped to bring on the Eeformation, and to 
bring back the worship to the state in which it was 
when St. Paul, in the fourteenth chapter of the First 
Epistle to the Corinthians, expected the one officiat- 
ing to speak in a language which could be understood 
by all, and therefore heard by all. And this is the 
conception of the Book of Common Prayer. 



70 WHAT IS OFFERED IN TEE OBLATION. 

When we are exalting the oblation in the service 
we must remember what it is, and the important and 
significant part that it fills in this appointed act of 
worship. It is to make a memorial before God. It 
is to make an offering unto Him. It has, therefore^ 
especial reference to God. jSTow any such act as this 
we call a sacrifice* without having in view any exact 
definition of it as such. It came under suspicion be- 
cause it was supposed to be claimed that it was an 
act in which the Lord Jesus was offered. People 
drew back from the doctrine of the Eomish Church 
as expressed by Bishop England, but the making a 
memorial of Him before the Eternal Father, laying 
before Him the symbols, the showing by these sym- 
bolical means our faith in the cross, our trust and re- 
liance on the great mediatorial work of the everlast- 
ing Son, this is our sacrifice,! this is what the Church 
understands by the Eucharist sacrifice. 

* St. Isidore says • " Sacrificium dictum quasi sacrum fac- 
tum, quia prece mystica consecratur in memoriam pro nobis 
Domi niece passionis. ff Liber Etymologiarum, lib. 6, cap. 19. 
Sacrifice, according to Bishop England and the Roman Catho- 
lics generally, is conceived " to consist in the production of 
the victim, its oblation by a lawful minister, and a destructive 
change being made therein in acknowledgment of God's 
supreme dominion.' ' Translation of the Mass, p. x. 

f " This, shortly, is the mind of Lombard us, the master of 
the sentences : ' That the thing which is done at God's board 
is a sacrifice, and so is that also which was made upon the 
cross, but not after one manner of understanding. For this 



WHAT IS OFFERED IJST THE OBLATION. 71 

There is no presumption in this. It is done in all 
humility, while to produce Christ and to offer Christ 
would be the most presumptuous act of which we 
could be the authors. But if we look at the sacrifice 
as the representing unto God of His own appointed 
work — the mediation of His own Son, as we name 
before Him the passion, the resurrection, the ascen- 
sion — and remind, as it were, God Himself what His 
Son did for us, what a beautiful illustration of faith, 
and trust, and love, and humility does it become. 
We come to God pleading the intervention of His 
Son. We are in act saying unto the Father that " He 
so loved us as to give His only begotten Son, that 
whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish, but shall 
have everlasting life." Every communicant should, 
therefore, when the oblation is made, have clearly and 
distinctly before his mind Christ in all the acts by 
which He became our Eedeemer. 

After the prayer of invocation we proceed to say : 
" Mercifully accept this our sacrifice of praise and 
thanksgiving ;" and it is in consequence of these 
words sometimes maintained that the material of the 
sacrifice is not bread and wine, but the mental act in 
the words of praise and thanksgiving. But one who 
reads the Book of Leviticus must know that the ma- 
was the thing, indeed, and that is the anniversary or com- 
memoration of the thing.' " 

Anglo-Catholic Library. Works of Archbishop Laud, note, 
vol. i.,p. 340. 



72 WHAT IS OFFERED IN THE OBLATION, 

terial sacrifice received various names according to the 
purpose for which the sacrifice was offered. The 
thank-offerings under the law were the offerings of 
some material things, but that material substance was 
offered on one occasion for a thanksgiving (7 : 12), at 
another for propitiation (7 : 7), and again for an ac- 
knowledgment of some relation to God (7 : 29), and 
then the offering or the sacrifice received its name 
from the purpose which was intended by the sacrifice. 
So in the Eucharist it is in the first place a commemo- 
ration. In making the offering of the elements we 
are by this act making a memorial before God of the 
work of redemption. But sacrifice does not rest sim- 
ply in the mental act of reminding ourselves of the 
acts of the Son of God, nor does it consist simply in 
the rehearsal of those acts before God to put Him, as 
it were, in mind of the meritorious work of the Ke- 
deemer, but by the offering of the elements we make 
a symbolical memorial, and call it the commemorative 
sacrifice. So by the same sacred acts of offering the 
sacramental elements we offer our " praise and thanks- 
giving for our redemption and reconciliation to God ;" 
and after the manner of the old sacrifices under the 
law we call it our " sacrifice of praise and thanks- 
giving." 



CHAPTER IV. 

The Views of the Doctors of the Early Church. 

It is proper now to inquire what were the views of 
the great theological writers of the first ages. What 
was it that they taught was offered in the oblation ? 
How did they understand the acts and words of the 
liturgy which they were using? Did they suppose 
and teach that the offering in the liturgy, that the 
oblation which was made in the worship of the Church, 
was the very Christ, or the ve*ry body and blood ; or 
did they hold that it was a commemorative offering 
of the great work which He did once for all on the 
cross ? 

The language of the great representative teachers 
of those ages was not as direct and explicit as it is 
to day, for the reason that the controversy had not 
then arisen concerning the nature of that offering. 
They had not asked what it was that the Church 
offered. There was at first none who asserted that 
the offering was Christ Himself. It first in modern 
times came up at the Council of Elorence. It is not 
to be expected that we shall find expressions as clear 
and distinct as we shall after the matter had come 
into controversy ; but still when such writers as Justin 



74 VIEWS OF DOCTORS OF THE EARLY CHURCH. 

Martyr and Irenseus speak of the oblation, they do 
not leave much doubt in our minds what kind of an 
oblation they are speaking of. They will make it 
clear that they were speaking of such a service as has 
come down to us, such as is contained in the liturgies ; 
and that their teaching was in accordance with the 
words and acts of the public service of the Church. 
It will be seen that they do not take their doctrine 
from other great teachers, but that they take the doc- 
trine from the liturgy itself, that what was taught 
there, that they reiterated in their sermons, epistles, 
and treatises. 

The first witness which we introduce is Justin 
Martyr, a.d. 140. He was born about the close of 
the first century. He was very evidently a diligent 
student of the Old Testament, and a careful observer 
of the Church's service, as he shows in his "Apol- 
ogy" and in his " Dialogue with Trypho." He re- 
fers to the oblation in these words : " In* like man- 
ner the oblation of the flour, which was commanded 
to be offered for those who were cleansed from leprosy, 
was a type of the bread of the Eucharist, which Jesus 
Christ our Lord commanded us to offer in remem- 
brance of the passion which He underwent." So 
alsof in quoting the passage from Malachi (page 10), 
in which God, through the prophet, says that in every 
place incense shall be offered unto My name and a 

* Dialogue with Tryplio, p. 121. Oxford translation, 
t Ibid. 



VIEWS OF DOCTORS OF THE EARLY CHURCH. 75 

pure offering, " He observes that with regard to those 
sacrifices which are offered to Him in every place by 
us Gentiles — that is, the Eucharistical bread, and 
equally the Eucharistical cup ; He then foretold that 
we should glorify His name." Again he says : "It 
is* plain that this prophecy (Isa. 33 : 13-20) speaks 
of the bread which our Christ gave us to offer (noiaiv 
eiz avafjivrjGir) in commemoration of His having 
taken flesh in behalf of those who believe in Him, 
for whose sake also He suffered ; and of the cup 
which He directed us to offer for a remembrance of 
His blood (o sis ava}xvri<5ir rov azjaaroo avrov 
7tapaSGDK8v . . . Ttoieiv) when we celebrate the 
Eucharist." 

The next writer we produce is Irena3us. He had 
conversed with Polycarp, the Bishop of Smyrna. 
Irenaeus became the Bishop of Lyons, in Gaul, after 
the martyrdom of Pothinus. He wrote about 167 
a.d. : " Givingf direction to His disciples to offer to 
God the first-fruits of His own created things — not as 
if He stood in need of them, but that they might be 
themselves neither unfruitful nor ungrateful — He 
took that created thing bread and gave thanks, and 
said, ' This is My body/ And the cup likewise, 
which is part of that creation to which we belong, 
He confessed to be His blood, and taught the new 

* Dialogue with Trypho, p. 162. Oxford translation. 
f Irenaeus, Book 4, chap. 17, sec. 5, p. 436. Edinburgh 
translation. 



76 VIEWS OF DOCTORS OF TEE EARLY CHURCH. 

oblation of the new covenant, which the Church, re- 
ceiving from the apostles, offers to God throughout 
the world." And again he writes : " We* offer to 
Him His own/' which cannot fail to point to the fre- 
quent language of the liturgies, " We set before Thee 
Thine own out of Thine own gifts." And he pro- 
ceeds that " the bread which has received the invoca- 
tion of God is no longer common bread, but the 
Eucharist." 

Tertullian,f a.d. 192, makes frequent mention of 
the Eucharist as an oblation ; but there is one pas- 
sage which shows what he understood to be the na- 
ture of that offering. He says, as Justin Martyr said 
before him, that the mysteries of Mithra are an imi- 
tation of the rites of the Church, and adds that he 
" celebrates also the oblation of bread." 

Origen,J a.d. 230, writes : "If you turn your 
thoughts to that bread which comes down from heaven 
and gives life to the world, to that shew-bread which 
God has set in open view, as being preparatory by 
faith in His blood, of which our Lord has said, ' Do 
this for a memorial of Me/ you will find that this is 
the only memorial which renders God propitious to 
men." 

Eusebius, the historian,§ a.d. 315, writes: "We 

* Irenseus, Book 4, chap. 18, sec. 5, p. 435. 
f De prsescriptione Hereticorum, chap. 40. 
X Horn, in Leviticurn. 
§ Demonstratio Evangelica, chap. 10. 



VIEWS OF DOCTORS OF THE EARLY CHURCH. 77 

celebrate the memorial of this sacrifice on the table 
by the symbols {dia ov)xfio\(jov} of His body and 
His saving blood. " On Mai. 1 : 10 he writes again : 
" We offer both sacrifices and incense ; the one when 
we celebrate the memorial of the great sacrifice, ac- 
cording to the mysteries delivered to us by Him, and 
when we present the Eucharist to God for our salva- 
tion by pious hymns and prayer ; the other, " etc. 
He also writes in his Commentary on Genesis, chap. 
49 : " Christ Himself delivered to His disciples the 
symbols of the Divine economy, commanding us to 
offer the image (rr/v eiKova) of His own body ; for 
since God no longer designed bloody sacrifices, . . . 
He has by tradition instructed us to use bread as a 
symbol (GvjufioXov) of His body." 

Athanasius,* a.d. 326, says what almost all the 
early doctors say, " that the offering of Melchisedec, 
because he offered bread and wine, was a type of the 
offering of the unbloody sacrifice, . . . that it was a 
type of the holy oblation." 

Macarius,f a presbyter of Alexandria, a.d. 373, 
said in a homily that " at that time great men, just 
men, and prophets knew that a Eedeemer was coming, 
but they did not know that He should suffer and be 
crucified, and shed His blood upon the cross, . . . 
nor that in the Church bread and wine should be 
offered, the symbols of His body and His blood." 

* Historia de Melchisedec. f Macarius, Homilies, p. 108. 



78 VIEWS OF DOCTORS OF THE EARL T CHURCH. 

Theodoret,* a.d. 423, in answer to the question, 
" Of what are the mystic symbols offered by the 
priests of God a sign?" replies : " Of the body and 
blood of our Lord ;" also he says " the Church, offers 
the symbols of His body and blood." 

Fulgentius,f a.d. 533, writes : " Believe steadfastly 
and in no way doubt that the only begotten Son. of 
God, being made flesh for us, did offer Himself as a 
sacrifice to God as a sweet savor, to whom with the 
Father and the Holy Ghost in the Old Testament 
beasts were offered ; and to whom now, together with 
the Father and the Holy Ghost, with whom He hath 
one Divinity, the Holy Catholic Church throughout 
the world ceases not to offer the sacrifices of bread 
and wine in faith and charity. For in those carnal 
victims the flesh of Christ was signified which He 
Himself would offer for our sins ; but in this sacrifice 
there is a giving of thanks, and a commemoration of 
the flesh of Christ, which He offered for us > and of 
the blood, which the same God shed for us„" 

In the Apostolical Constitutions, which represent 
the customs and form of thought in the Church of 
the third and fourth centuries, we find the follow- 
ing : " Instead J of bloody sacrifices, He hath ap- 

* Dial, p. 84, and Ps. 109. 

f De fide ad Patrum. See Cave's Historia Literaria under 
Augustinus, quoted by Bishop Cooper against private masses, 
p. 94. 

X Chase's Translation of the Apostolic Constitution, Book 6, 
chap. 23, p. 155. 



VIEWS OF DOCTORS OF THE EARL7 CHURCH. 79 

pointed that reasonable and unbloody and mystical 
one of His body and blood, which is performed to 
represent by symbols the death of the Lord/' And 
again : " Offer* the acceptable Eucharist, the repre- 
sentation of the royal body of Christ both in your 
churches and in the cemeteries. " 

In the second canon of the Council of Ancyra, a.d. 
3 L5, the deacon is forbidden ' ' to offer the bread and 
the cup." The Council of Laodicea, a.d. 367, in 
canon 49, forbids " to offer bread during the forty 
days of Lent, except on the Sabbath and on the Lord's 
day/' The third Council of Carthage, a.d. 397, in 
canon 24, forbids ' ' that in the sacrament of the body 
and blood of Christ anything else may be offered ex- 
cept that which the Lord Himself taught ; that is, 
bread and wine/' 

The above writers use a uniform language. They 
say that it is bread and wine that are offered as a 
memorial. They do not use other expressions which 
qualify this language. They show that they had be- 
fore their minds the order and language of the lit- 
urgies — that " the elements, the gifts and donations ;" 
" Thine own out of Thine own f " the first-fruits o± 
His creatures ;" " the antitypes of His body and 
blood" — were offered. They do not use such lan- 
guage as that, ' { The victim is produced on the altar 
and that this victim is offered." They do not say 
that the body and blood of Christ are offered, except 

* Book 6, chap. 30, p, 162. 



80 VIEWS OF DOCTORS OF THE EARLY CHlTROH. 

in such an application as was afterward explained by 
St. Augustine.* It may have been natural to fall 
into such language when they had in their minds that 
the sacramental bread and wine represented the body 
and blood of Christ. It might be natural to add 
these words, and not to say that it was simply bread 
and wine that they presented to God the Father, but 
bread and wine, which were the symbols, or the repre- 
sentations of that one offering of the Son of God ; but 
they never used any such unqualified and direct lan- 
guage as is used in the modern Church of Kome. 
But, above all, it must be remembered that after the 
oblation was made there was an invocation of the 
Holy Ghost that the common bread and wine might 
become the body and blood of Christ. The language 
which has been quoted applied to the oblation which 
was made before the prayer for the Holy Ghost to 
make them the body and blood of Christ was uttered. 
It was this language of the liturgies which was before 
the minds of these writers — a language to which they 
have at every celebration of the Eucharist given utter- 
ance. 

This will be shown more clearly when the invoca- 
tion comes up for consideration. 

But there is another class of writers who use other 
expressions which seem to indicate that it is Christ 
Himself, or His body and blood, that is offered. 

Probably St. Cyprian was the first of these. He 

* See above 



VIEWS OF DOCTORS OF THE EAHL Y CHURCH. 81 

was Bishop of Carthage in a.d. 248. He was a man 
of vigorous mind, and usually gave strong expression 
to his views ; but his language is not clear to this 
point. He does not use expressions which leave no 
doubt on our minds that such was his opinion. On 
the contrary, he uses also the ordinary language of 
the Church — that the oblation was a memorial offer- 
ing. Thus he says :* " For who is more a priest -of 
the Most High God than our Lord Jesus Christ, who 
offered a sacrifice to God, His Father, and offered 
that very same thing which Melchisedec offered — that 
is, bread and wine — to wit, His body and blood/' 
He also says : " Because we make mention of His 
passion (for the Lord's passover is the sacrifice which 
we offer) we ought to do nothing else than what He 
did, for the Scriptures say, * As often as ye eat this 
bread and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord's death 
till He come.' As often, therefore, as we offer this 
cup in commemoration of the Lord, and of His pas- 
sion, let us do what it is known that the Lord did." 
Again he says : " For if Jesus Christ, our Lord and 
God, is Himself the chief Priest of God the Father, 
and has first offered Himself a sacrifice to the Father, 
and has commanded this to be done in commemora- 
tion of Himself, certainly that priest truly discharges 
the office of Christ who imitates that which Christ 
did ; and he then offers a true and full sacrifice in 

* St. Cyprian's Epis. ad Csecil., 62. Edinburgh transla- 
tion, 63, Oxford translation. 



82 VIEWS OFDOCTOBS OF THE EARLY CHURCH. 

the church to God the Father when he proceeds to 
offer it according to what he sees Christ Himself to 
have offered.'' Although the offering might have 
been expressed with more theological exactness, yet 
these various expressions in the same letter — " The 
Lord's passion is the sacrifice which we offer ;" " We 
offer this cup in commemoration of the Lord ;" " He 
commanded this to be done in commemoration of 
Himself — we should not he able* to harmonize them 
on the supposition that Cyprian held that the offering 
was literally an offering of the body and blood of 
Christ. 

St. Cyril,* the Bishop of Jerusalem, a.d. 350, in 
his " Catechetical Lectures," says : " When we offer 
to Him our supplications . . . offer up Christ cruci- 
fied for our sins." How far this is to be taken in a 
literal sense does not appear. If others who succeeded 
him had not begun to use a less ambiguous language 
in regard to the offering in the Eucharist, we should 
hardly understand him to mean that the Eucharistic 
offering was Christ Himself, for he shows that lie is 
sommenting on the same liturgy which has come down 
to us when he said : " The bread and the wine of the 
JEucharist before the invocation of the adorable Trin- 
ity were simply bread and wine, while after the invo- 
cation the bread becomes the body of Christ and the 
wine the blood of Christ ;" and again when he said : 
"We call upon the merciful God to send forth the 

* Catechetical Lectures. Oxford translation, pp. 268, 275. 



VIEWS OF DOCTORS OF THE EARL T CHURCH. 83 

Holy Spirit upon the gifts lying before Him." This 
is the language of the Greek liturgy which was lying 
before St. Cyril, and on which he was commenting. 
He is quoting portion after portion of it, and refers 
to the invocation three times, bat there is no such 
oblation as that which he puts into words. He prob- 
ably did not intend so to be understood. When he 
said, " We offer up Christ crucified for our sins/' he 
designed to express nothing more than the one cele- 
brating according to the American book would mean 
if he should say that we were presenting Christ as a 
sacrifice for our sins, and as the meritorious cause of 
our redemption. His language would, if taken liter- 
ally, no more agree with the liturgy of Jerusalem, 
which was evidently before him, than the language of 
Bishop England agrees with the mass. 

It must be acknowledged that Ambrose, Augustine, 
and Chrysostom began to use language which did not 
accord with the language of the liturgy. Their lan- 
guage may have given occasion for the interpolation 
in the form of making the oblation of such phrases as 
" tremendous and unbloody sacrifice." But it was a 
language which had not been in use from the begin- 
ning, and it is especially to be observed that Augus- 
tine as well as Ambrose and Chrysostom explains the 
language, and uses other phrases which qualify it, and 
entirely blunt the edge of such expressions as that 
Christ is offered in sacrifice. 

Thus Ambrose, the Archbishop of Milan, a.d. 374, 



84: VIEWS OF DOCTORS OF THE EARL Y CHURCH. 

in commenting on the thirty-eighth psalm, says : 
" Now Christ does not seem to offer, yet He Himself 
is offered on earth, since the body of Christ is offered." 
And he says in commenting on St. Luke : " We 
doubt not that the angel is present when Christ is 
present, when Christ is immolated ;" but in his treat- 
ise, " De Officiis," he says : " A shadow in the law, 
an image in the Gospel, truth in the heavens. Be- 
fore a lamb was offered, now Christ is offered. . . . 
Here in image, there in truth, when He appears 
before the Father as an Advocate for us." Which 
latter language must evidently qualify the former. 
To reverse the process, we would deprive language of 
much of its force. It is used in a metaphorical man- 
ner. It is a transfer of sense, which should deceive 
no one, but give only greater beauty and force. 

St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, a.d. 396, says : 
" Instead* of those oblations and sacrifices Christ's 
body is offered and communicated to the receiver. " 
But then he uses this language : " Thef flesh and 
blood of this sacrifice before the advent of Christ was 
promised by victims (yictimas) ; in the passion of 
Christ they were offered in reality ; after the ascen- 
sion they were celebrated by a sacrament of mem- 
ory." In his epistle to BonifaceJ he explains this lat- 

* De Civitate Dei, Book 17, chap. 20. Edinburgh trans- 
lation, 
f Contra Faustum, chap. 21. 
X Ratramnus, Liber de Corp. et Sang., chap. 35. 



VIEWS OF DOCTORS OF THE EARL Y CIIURCII. 85 

ter language, and his explanations show that there 
was no disagreement with the previous form of ex- 
pression. " We often speak in this manner when 
Easter draweth nigh, c To-morrow or the next day is 
the Lord's passion/ though He suffered so many years 
ago, and that but once for all. Likewise we say on 
the Lord's day, ' On this day the Lord rose again/ 
though so many years have passed since He rose. 
Why, then, is none so foolish as to charge us with 
falsehood for so speaking? It is because we name 
the days after their likeness to those on which the 
things themselves were done. Whence that is called 
the day of His resurrection, which is not so indeed, 
but like to it in the revolution of time ; and by reason 
of the celebration of the sacrament that is said to be 
done on this very day, which not on this day, but in 
former times was done. Was not Christ sacrificed in 
His own person ? And yet in the sacrament He is 
offered up for the people not only during all the 
paschal solemnities, but every day. Wherefore He 
lieth not who, when questioned, answereth that Christ 
is now sacrificed. For if sacraments had not some 
resemblance to those things of which they are the 
sacraments, they would not be sacraments at all. But 
from this resemblance they of ttimes take names of the 
things themselves. As, then, after a certain sort the 
sacrament of the body of Christ is the body of Christ, 
and the sacrament of the blood of Christ, the blood of 
Christ, so, too, the sacrament of the faith is the faith." 



86 VIEWS OF DOCTORS OF THE EARL Y CHURCH 

On which Ratramnus,* about a.d. 850, remarks in 
his " Tract against Parchasius :" " We see Augus- 
tine saith that the sacraments are one thing, and the 
things of which they are the sacraments are another. 
For the body in which Christ suffered, and the blood 
which flowed from His side, are the things them- 
selves, while the mysteries of these things are the sac- 
raments of the body and blood of Christ, which are 
celebrated in memory of the Lord's passion/' 

These words of St. Augustine and the comment of 
Ratramnus serve as an explanation of much of the 
language of the great doctors of the fourth century. 
It is here made a question of rhetoric, and explained 
as such. The body and blood of Christ are not so 
called because in the sacrament they are the reality, 
but because they represent the reality. This is an 
important explanation, and should remove most of 
the difficulty which is found in these expressions. It 
is with truth said that the rhetoric of the ancients has 
become the logic of the moderns. 

St. Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople, A.D. 
398, says : " Offerf always the same, so that it is one 
sacrifice ; otherwise, since the sacrifice is offered in 
many places, there must be many Christs. But this 
is not the case ; but there is one Christ everywhere — 
whole Christ here, whole Christ there, one body. 

* Liber de Corp. et Sang., p. 44, chap. 36. 
f Homilies on the Epistle to the Hebrews 9 : 26. Oxford 
translation. 



VIEWS OF DOCTORS OF THE EARL T CHURCH. 87 

As therefore He is one body, though offered in many 
places, and not many bodies, so likewise is there one 
sacrifice. It is that High Priest of ours who has 
offered the sacrifice which cleanses ; and we offer even 
now that sacrifice which was then, too, offered — the 
inexhaustible sacrifice. This happens in memory of 
that which then took place ; for ' Do this/ He says, 
' in memory of Me.' It is not a different sacrifice as 
the high priest presented in former times, but we 
offer always the same, or rather we perform a memo- 
rial of that sacrifice." 

Very obviously St. Chrysostom had the same view 
as Katramnus* when he said : " What He did once 
He daily repeateth. He once offered Himself for the 
sins of the people, yet the same oblation is every day 
to be celebrated by the faithful, but in mystery, so 
that what the Lord Jesus Christ, by once offering 
Himself, fully accomplished, this, in remembrance of 
His passion, is every day performed by the celebration 
of the mysteries. Yet it is not false to say that in 
these mysteries the Lord is sacrificed or suffers, since 
they have a likeness to that death and passion, the 
representations of which they are, for they take the 
names of those things of which they are the sacra- 
ments." 

The purpose, then, of the oblation must be appar- 
ent from the teaching of the great doctors of the early 
Church, as well as from the language of the liturgies. 

* Ratramnus, cap. 39, 40. 



88 VIEWS OF DOCTORS OF THE EARL T CHURCH. 

They all agree that in making the oblation they are 
making a memorial. Whatever other language they 
use, they all agree that they are making a memorial 
before God of the acts of the Redeemer — His passion, 
His death, His resurrection, His ascension, His sitting 
at the right hand of the Father, His second coming 
to judgment. 



CHAPTER V. 
Views of Anglican Theologians. 

It is now necessary to inquire into the views of the 
Anglican Church, and find what is the doctrine of the 
oblation which has been taught by her. 

From the time that the Anglican Church was 
brought under the dominion of Western theology, 
the doctrine of transubstantiation prevailed, which 
required a belief that Christ was produced upon the 
altar and was offered in sacrifice. This portion of the 
history of the Church of England may be divided 
into three epochs ; the first reaching from Wickliffe 
until the affairs of the Church were settled during 
the reign of Elizabeth ; the second was the develop- 
ment of theological thought under the reign of the 
Stuarts ; the third is the revival of historic theology 
during the present century. 

Until the Reformation there was no Anglican the- 
ology. It was the theological thought which was de- 
veloped during the mediseval ages. It was the the- 
ology of the Angelic Doctor, Aquinas, and the theol- 
ogy of Lombard, the Master of the Sentences. Their 
form of theological thought reigned almost supreme. 
The first real revolt was made by Wickliffe. He 



90 VIEWS OF ANGLICAN THEOLOGIANS. 

made objections to the doctrine of transubstantiation. 
He called in question the statement. that the elements 
were changed in their substance, but not in their acci- 
dents ; and with this that Christ, body and blood, 
soul and divinity, was offered in the oblation. 

This, as has been stated, was one of the great ques- 
tions which came up for discussion in the reign of 
Henry VIII. The leaders of thought in the Keforma- 
tion denied the mediaeval doctrine that Christ was 
produced on the altar, and that He was the object 
offered in the mass. It was against this that there 
was a revolt. Cranmer* said : " When the old 
Fathers called the mass, or Supper of the Lord, a sac- 
rifice, they meant that it was a sacrifice of lauds and 
thanksgivings, and so as well the people as the priest 
do sacrifice ; or else that it was a remembrance of the 
very true sacrifice propitiatory of Christ ; but they 
meant in no wise that it was a very true sacrifice for 
sin, and applicable by the priest to the quick and the 
dead." 

So Eidley said : " The representation and com- 
memoration of Christ's death and passion, said and 
done in the mass, is called the sacrifice, oblation, or 
immolation of Christ non ret veritate (as learned men 
do write) sed significandi mysterio." 

So also John Lambertf says : " Christ being offered 

* Defence of Catholic Doctrine of the Sacrament of the Body 
and Blood of Christ, Book 5, chap. 16, p. 481, Jenkyn's ed. 
f A Treatise of the Sacrament. 



VIEWS OF ANGLICAN THEOLOGIANS. 91 

up once for all in His own proper person, is yet said 
to be offered up (not only every year at Easter, but 
also every day) in the celebration of the sacrament, 
because His oblation, once forever made, is thereby 
represented." 

Such were the views of the Keformers which were 
introduced into the liturgy of Edward VI. It was 
no longer held to be Christ that was offered, but the 
memorial and representation of Christ once for all 
offering Himself upon the cross. 

And now came the construction and development 
of an English theology. It was no longer a quotation 
from the Angelic Doctor nor the opinion of the Mas- 
ter of the Sentences, but it was a theology founded 
on the opinions of the Church, on the decisions of 
the General Councils, and on the writings of the great 
teachers. We see in the Homilies that every doctrine 
is fortified by quotations from Justin Martyr, Irengeus, 
Cyprian, Augustine, and Chrysostom ; and this form 
of theological thought is exhibited and defended by 
Jewell in his " Apology for the Church of England/' 
which thus became one of the earliest text-books of 
Anglican theology. It was theology founded on the 
Scriptures and the Fathers. 

Thus Jewell,* Bishop of Salisbury, a.d. 1550, after 
quoting from Chrysostom, said : " Thus we offer up 
Christ — that is to say, an example, a commemoration, 
a remembrance of the death of Christ. This kind of 

* Reply to Harding, p. 424. 



92 VIEWS OF ANGLICAN THEOLOGIANS. 

sacrifice was never denied, but M. Harding's (the 
Eomish opponent of Jewell) real sacrifice was never 
yet proved." 

So Bishop Bilson* said : " The oblation of bread 
and wine for a thanksgiving to God and a memorial 
of His Son's death was so confessed and undoubted 
a truth in the Church of Christ, till your schoolmen 
began to wrest both Scriptures and Fathers to serve 
their qiiidities, that not only the liturgies under the 
names of Clement, Basil, and Chrysostom do mention 
it, . . . but also the very Missals used in your own 
churches at this day do confirm the same. " He also 
says : " That which is offered and consecrated by the 
priest is called a sacrifice and oblation, because it is a 
memory and representation of the true sacrifice and 
holy oblation made on the altar of the cross/ 5 

This was not only the language of the Reformation, 
but it became the continuous language of the great 
theologians of the Church of England. Their the- 
ology became a harmonious body of truth of the doc- 
trine concerning redemption by Christ. Eichard 
Hooker's great work on " Ecclesiastical Polity" was 
written in harmony with the language of the Church 
of the first six centuries. It was that great body of 
truth which he brought to bear on the controversy 
with the Puritans, and showed how it condemned the 
error of excess, of the mediaeval additions to the faith, 
as well as the defect of the faith, created by the un- 

* Of Subjection and Rebellion, p. 700. 



VIEWS OF ANGLICAN THEOLOGIANS. 93 

limited exercise of private judgment. The form of 
Christian truth settled down into the expression which 
he gave to it ; but no doubt Hooker was under the 
influence which has shaped modern thought, and 
which is called the subjective view of Christian doctrine 
and of the sacrament of the holy Eucharist ; so that 
*he fastened his attention more particularly and almost 
exclusively on the grace that it conferred upon us, 
and not on what we offered in it unto God ; so he said 
that there was no sacrifice in the Eucharist. But in 
saying this he had no doubt reference to the oblation 
which was supposed to be offered in the mass ; and 
hence in the rejection of this he, rejected sacrifice or 
oblation altogether. 

But as we come to the second epoch of Anglican 
theology we find a more settled conviction of the 
truth. The controversy with Eome and an examina- 
tion of the doctrines of Eome came up anew. The 
troubles in the times of the Stuarts produced some 
profound theologians, who examined with learning 
and acuteness the question of transubstantiation, and 
all the inferences and practices to which that doctrine 
led. The writers of this epoch have constructed a 
body of Divine truth, the knowledge of which is req- 
uisite for those who are enrolled as teachers of the 
Church. Chief among them are Andrews, and Laud, 
and Mede, and Bramhall, and Thorndike, and Taylor, 
and Brevint, and Bull, and Nelson, and Wilson, and 
Brett. They use a uniform language concerning the 



94 VIEWS OF ANGLICAN THEOLOGIANS, 

Komish doctrine, and also concerning the doctrine of 
the Eucharist as it was taught in the primitive 
Church. They drew in their inspiration from the 
Fathers. It was their profound study of those who 
lived nearest the origin of the Christian Church that 
gave them clear and distinct views of every point of 
Christian doctrine. 

Bishop Andrews,* a.d. 1660, says: " Take away 
from the mass your transubstantiation, and there will 
be no longer any controversy with us concerning the 
sacrifice. That a memory is there made we grant 
willingly. That your Christ (de pane factum) made 
of bread is sacrificed we will never grant. " 

Archbishop Laud,f a.d. 1628, said: "If Bellar- 
mine do call the oblation of the body and the blood of 
Christ a sacrifice for praise, surely he doth well in it ; 
for so it is if Bellarmine mean no more by the body 
and the blood of Christ than a commemoration and 
a representation of that sacrifice offered up by Christ 
Himself, as Bishop Jewell very learnedly and fully 
acknowledges. But if Bellarmine go farther than 
this, and by the oblation of the body and the blood of 
Christ mean that the priest offers up that which Christ 
Himself did, and not a commemoration of it only, he 
is erroneous in that, and can never make it good/* 

* Translated from Responsio ad Apologiam. Anglo-Catho- 
lic Library, p. 251. 

f History of the Troubles and Trials of Archbishop Laud. 
Anglo- Catholic Library, p. 258. 



VIEWS OF ANGLICAN THEOLOGIANS. 95 

Joseph Mede,* a.d. 1635, says as follows : " Christ 
is offered in this sacred supper not hypos tatically, as 
the Papist would have Him (for so He was but once 
offered), but commemoratively only — that is, by the 
sacred rite of bread and wine we present and incul- 
cate His blessed passion to His Father ; we put Him 
in mind thereof by setting the monuments thereof 
before Him ; we testify our own mindfulness thereof 
unto His sacred majesty ; that so He would for His 
sake, according to the terms of His covenant in Him, 
be favorable and propitious unto us miserable sinners. " 

Archbishop Bramhall,f a.d. 1633, says that "the 
priest was ordained to offer a representative sacrifice, 
to commemorate and to apply the sacrifice which 
Christ made upon the cross ; but for any other sacri- 
fice distinct from that, which is propitiatory, meritori- 
ous, and satisfactory by its proper virtue and power, 
the Scriptures do not authorize, the Fathers did not 
believe, the Protestants do not receive any such.-" 

Bishop Cosing a.d. 1670, says : " If we take a sac- 
rifice properly and formally, whether for the action 
of sacrificing (as it is this day taken by the Roman 
priests), then truly, although, by the commemoration 
and representation, it be the same memorial sacrifice 

* The Christian Sacrifice, p. 374. 

f Protestant Ordinations Defended. Discourse VII. Anglo- 
Catholic Library, p. 213. 

X Notes on Book of Common Prayer. Anglo Catholic Li- 
brary, vol. v., p. 330. 



96 VIEWS OF ANGLICAN THEOLOGIANS. 

with that which was offered on the cross, yet the 
action itself or the oblation which is now made by us 
in the Eucharist agrees neither in species nor genus 
with the oblation or immolation which was on the 
cross. " 

So Bishop Jeremy Taylor,* a.d. 1674, says : " As 
Christ is pleased to represent to His Father that great 
sacrifice as a means of atonement and expiation for 
all mankind, and with special purpose and intend- 
ment for all the elect, all that serve Him in holiness, 
so He hath appointed fchab the same ministry shall be 
done upon earth, too, in our manner and according 
to our proportion ; and therefore hath constituted 
and separated an order of men who, by showing forth 
the Lord's death by sacramental representation, may 
pray unto God after the same manner that our Lord 
and High Priest does— that is, offer to God and rep- 
resent in this solemn prayer and sacrament Christ as 
already offered up." 

Herbert Thorndike,f A.D. 1662, says : " Common 
sense, which tells all men that what is once done can 
never be done again, obliges them to understand an 
abatement in the property of that language which 
attributes the sacrificing of Christ to a priest, because 
once done upon the cross it can never be done again.' ' 
And he also says that the Eomanists suppose that 

* Holy Living, sec. 10, chap. 4. 

f Of the Laws of the Church, vol. iv., pp. 122, 567. Anglo- 
Catholic Library. 



VIEWS OF ANGLICAN THEOLOGIANS. 97 

** this sacrifice consists in substituting the 'body and 
blood of Christ to be bodily present under the acci- 
dents of the elements, the substance of them being 
abolished, and ceasing to be there any more ; and not 
in offering and presenting the sacrifice of Christ cruci- 
fied, here now represented by the sacrament, unto 
God, for obtaining the benefits of His passion in be- 
half of His Church. " 

Eichard Crankenthorpe,* a.d. 1600, writes : " From 
these things, which we have now declared concerning 
your transubstantiation, two besides many other things 
follow. The first is that the sacrifice of the mass is 
not truly a propitiatory sacrifice, as the Council of 
Trent and your theologians teach, but only a Eucha- 
ristic and commemorative sacrifice. That which is 
properly a propitiatory sacrifice by its own force, not 
by the relation which it holds to another, makes God 
propitious to sinners, and by its own merits, strength, 
value, and dignity obtains remission of sins and the 
grace of God. There is no such sacrifice, or ever has 
been, or ever will be, except Christ alone offering on the 
cross to God His body and His blood. He Himself 
and besides Him no one is a propitiation for our sins. 
Christ is not in the Eucharist after the manner of a 
body (corporaliter), as we have shown, and so His 
body and blood is not able to be offered except after 
the manner of a type (typice), and by way (per mo- 

* Defensio Ecclesise Anglicanse, chap. 74, p. 536. Anglo- 
Catholic Library. 



98 VIEWS OF ANGLICAN THEOLOGIANS. 

dum) of commemoration. Wherefore what is offered 
in the mass really and by the hands of a priest (sac- 
rifici) is not able to be a true and proper propitiatory 
sacrifice. ' ' 

D. Brevint,* a.d. 1680, wrote : " This sacrifice, 
which is a real oblation, was not to be offered more 
than once, is by an Eucharistical and devout com- 
memoration to be offered up every day. This is what 
the apostle calls ' to set forth the death of the Lord ; T 
to set it forth, I say, as well before- the eyes of God, 
His Father, as before the eyes of all men ; and what 
St. Augustine did explain when her said that the holy 
blood of Jesus Christ was offered up in three man- 
ners — by 'prefiguring sacrifices under the law, before 
His coming into the world \ in real deed upon the 
cross ; and by a commemorative sacrifice after He had 
ascended into heaven. All comes to this, that the 
sacrifice as it is itself and in itself can never be re- 
stored ; yet by way of devout celebration and remem- 
brance it may nevertheless be reiterated every day. 
Secondly, that whereas the holy Eucharist is by itself 
a sacrament wherein G-od offers unto all men the 
blessing merited by the oblation of His Son, it like- 
wise becomes, by our remembrance, a kind of sacrifice 
also whereby to obtain from His hands the same bless- 
ings ; we present and expose before His eyes the same 
holy and precious oblation once offered." 

* Christian Sacrament and Sacrifice, p. 56. 



VIEWS OF ANGLICAN THEOLOGIANS. 99 

So Bishop Patrick,* a.d. 1659: "We do show 
forth the Lord's death unto God, and commemorate 
before Him the great things that He hath done for 
us. We keep it (as it were) in His memory, and plead 
before Him the sacrifice of His Son, which we show 
unto Him, humbly requiring that grace and pardon, 
with all other benefits of it, may be bestowed upon us. M 

Bishop Bull,f a.d. 1680, who observes the beauty 
of the oblation as an act of worship in the liturgies, 
says : " In the holy Eucharist, therefore, we set be- 
fore God the bread and wine, as figures or images of 
the precious blood of Christ shed for us and of His 
precious body (they are the yery words of the Clemen- 
tine liturgy), and plead to God the merits of His 
Son's sacrifice, once offered on the cross for us sin- 
ners, and in this sacrament represented, beseeching 
Him, for the sake thereof, to bestow His heavenly 
blessings upon us." 

Bishop Beyeridge,J a.d. 1680, says: "We may 
here observe that the apostle does not say that Christ's 
death is repeated, or that He is offered up again every 
time the sacrament is administered, but only that the 
Lord's death is shown by it ; and therefore this is not, 
as the Papists absurdly imagine, ' a propitiatory sacri- 
fice for the living and the dead/ but only commemo- 

* Mensa Mystica, p. 10. 
f Bull's Works, vol. ii., p. 246. 

X The Necessity and Advantage of Frequent Communion, 
p. 5. 



100 VIEWS OF ANGLICAN THEOLOGIANS. 

rative and declarative of that one sacrifice which 
Christ once offered, to be propitiation for the sins of 
the whole world." 

George Hicks,* a.d. 1707, says that in the ancient 
Church the Eucharistic sacrifice was " believed to be 
an avaiAvqGiZ, or commemoration by the symbols of 
bread and wine of the body and blood of Christ, once 
offered up to God on the cross for our redemption ; 
it would not, therefore, be then thought an offering 
up again to God of the very body and blood of Christ 
substantially present under the appearances of bread 
and wine ; for these two notions are inconsistent and 
cannot stand together." 

Bishop Wilson, f a.d. 1710, says : " All this is done 
to represent the death of Jesus Christ and the mer- 
cies which He has obtained for us ; to represent it 
not only to ourselves, but unto God the Father, that 
as the prayers and alms of Cornelius are said to have 
gone up for a memorial before God, so this service 
may be an argument with His Divine Majesty to re- 
member in heaven His Son's death, as we do on earth, 
and for His sake to blot out our sins and to give us 
all an interest in His merits." 

Thomas Brett, J a.d. 1700, says : " Christ offered 
the symbols of His body, which was not yet broken, 

* Dean of Worcester on the Christian Priesthood vol. iii., 
p. 270. Anglo-Catholic Librarv. 
\ Parochalia. 
% Collection of Principal Liturgies with Dissertation, p. 135. 



VIEWS OF ANGLICAN THEOLOGIANS. 101 

and His blood, which was not yet shed upon the cross, 
but which was to be there broken and shed ; but we 
offer the symbols of His long since broken and of His 
blood long since shed. He in His oblation gave His 
natural body to be broken and His blood to be shed ; 
but we in ours only commemorate and offer to God 
the memorial of what was then done." 

These persons were the representatives of the the- 
ology of the Church of England ; they represented 
the historical theology of the Church. They were 
diligent students of the Fathers of the first six cen- 
turies. These doctrines were not the result of private 
judgment, of their own unaided conceptions of what 
the Word of God taught, but these opinions and doc- 
trines which they set forth were the opinions and 
doctrines which had been maintained in the Church 
age after age, which had their beginning from the 
apostles. These were the doctrines in which those 
hundred and twenty assembled in the upper room of 
Jerusalem, and those who were joined to them, con- 
tinued steadfastly (Acts 2 : 42), which were taught 
and proclaimed by apostles and persons who had at- 
tended on the personal ministry of our Lord. The 
theology of this second epoch of the English Church 
was saturated by the teaching and the sayings of the 
great bishops and doctors of the first ages. More 
names might be added, and other great teachers might 
be introduced as the witnesses of the belief and doc- 
trine of the Church of England. These teachers did 



102 VIEWS OF ANGLICAN THEOLOGIANS. 

not draw their inspiration from the continental di- 
vines nor did they follow the medievalists, the An- 
gelic Doctor, or the Master of the Sentences, but they 
went back to the ages of the General Councils, and 
to the liturgies which used the language of the uni- 
versal Church, and to the expositions which were 
made by Justin, and Irenaeus, and Cyprian, and Cyril, 
and Augustine, and Chrysostom. They drew their 
knowledge and interpretation of the facts of Chris- 
tianity from an age which conceived that trath was 
to be preferred even to unity. 

We now come to the third epoch of Anglican theol- 
ogy. The eighteenth century was certainly not distin- 
guished for the study of the doctrines of the Church. 
The duty which came up in that age was even a 
more serious one. It was the defence of the Christian 
religion itself. The previous epoch brought the 
clergy of the Church of England into contact with 
the claims of the Eoman Church. The revolt at the 
Reformation had to be justified and maintained, and 
the whole question between Roman and Catholic doc- 
trine had to be opened anew ; and in no writers do 
we see more profound learning and a clearer percep- 
tion of the revealed doctrines of the Christian religion. 

But there is an apology to be made for the teaching 
of the period from the last of the Stuarts to the be- 
ginning of the present century. The Church inher- 
ited a theology which failed to teach and to bring out 
into practice those doctrines in which the redemption 



VIEWS OF ANGLICAN THEOLOGIANS. 103 

of the human soul was involved. The deism of the 
beginning of the eighteenth century was to be encoun- 
tered and overcome ; and that century, although it 
was not theological, yet did a service which was pos- 
sibly not appreciated, and which kept out of view the 
teaching of the creed and the sacraments, but it 
brought forward a view of the foundations on which 
the faith rested. It gave us Butler's " Analogy" and 
Leslie's " Deism/' and a host of treatises of similar im- 
port, which did their work in their day and created a 
confidence in the Christian faith, which even the sci- 
entific speculations of the present have not removed. 

But there came a revival of theological teaching in 
our day, especially in the first part of the nineteenth 
century ; and particularly in the publications at Ox- 
ford of the Library of the Fathers of the first four 
centuries, and the republication of the works of the 
great theologians of the sixteenth and seventeeth cen- 
turies under the name of " The Anglo-Catholic The- 
ology." These publications constituted an epoch in 
the Anglican Church wherever it existed ; and there 
was thus a revival of the teaching of such great doc- 
tors as Andrews, and Laud, and Cousin, and Thorn- 
dike, and Bull, and numerous others. 

The first representative of the opinions of the 
Church in this period is Bishop Seabury, of Connecti- 
cut. As it was through his means that the oblation 
and invocation were restored to the use in the Angli- 
can service in America, his opinions would be valu- 



104 VIEWS OF ANGLICAN THEOLOGIANS. 

able.* He denies the doctrine of transubstantiation, 
and speaks of the defect in the English service in that 
it has not the oblation of the elements ; which at 
least shows that he did not consider the oblation to 
consist in offering Christ in the Eucharist, but it was 
a representation of Christ as the only sacrifice for sin. 

The next that may be brought forward is Arch- 
deacon Daubeny, of Salisbury, in 1807. He says that 
" the holy Eucharist is a commemorative sacrifice 
offered up to God by way of memorial, or bringing 
to remembrance that grand sacrifice once offered on 
the cross, and for the purpose of applying the merits 
of it to the parties who in faith offer it up." 

Philpotts, Bishop of Exeter, in 1836, in a charge 
delivered to the clergy, said : " . . . the sacrament 
of the Lord's Supper, the commemorative sacrifice of 
the body and blood of Christ, in which the action and 
suffering of our great High Priest are represented and 
offered to God on earth, as they are continually by 
the same High Priest Himself in heaven ; the Church 
on earth doing after its measure the same thing as the 
Head in heaven — Christ in heaven presenting the 
sacrifice and applying it to its purposed end properly 
and gloriously ; the Church on earth commemora- 
tively and humbly, yet really and effectively, by pray- 
ing to God, with thanksgiving, in the virtue and 
merit of that sacrifice which it thus exhibits." 

* Beardsley's Life of Seabury gives us almost no informa- 
tion on this subject. 



VIEWS OF ANGLICAN THEOLOGIANS. 105 

The Kev. William Palmer revived in England the 
study of liturgies. In his " Origines Liturgicse" he 
investigated the relation of the English Book of Com- 
mon Prayer to the great liturgies of the Church down 
to the seventeenth century ; and showed that the lit- 
urgy now in use was, in all its essential parts, identi- 
cal with the liturgy in which the whole Catholic 
Church had worshipped during the first six centuries. 
This is what he says of the oblation and invocation 
after he had studied those acts of the liturgies of the 
great Patriarchates of the first centuries. After quot- 
ing the words of the oblation from the liturgy of 
Clement he says : " Here the bread and wine are evi- 
dently spoken of as the sacrifice ; for when G-od is 
implored to send His Holy Spirit on the sacrifice, that 
the bread may be made Christ's body, and the wine His 
blood, it seems evident that the bread and wine are 
identical with the sacrifice ; otherwise there is no con- 
nection between the former and the latter parts of the 
prayer. "* 

There being no oblation of the elements in the Eng- 
lish liturgy, there is no way in which we can make a 
comparison of its teaching with that of the Anglican 
theologians. The elements are placed on the altar. The 
mere placing them there is an oblation. The mere act 
pleads to God ; but the American liturgy is far more 
significant when we express in words the act that we 
are performing. Thus Bishop Wilson, in " Sacra 

* Origines Liturgicse, vol. ii., p. 80. 



106 VIEWS OF ANGLICAN THEOLOGIANS 

Privata," advises the priest and the communicant to 
supply this defect by saying from the liturgy of 
Clement, " We offer to Thee, our King and our God, 
this bread and this cup." But Keble,* in his " Eu- 
charistical Adoration," says : " Not as if, according to 
the Eoman writers, the expiatory sacrifice on the cross 
were repeated or continued on our altars. The Epis- 
tle to the Hebrews, and the ancient Church comment- 
ing on it, as expressly negative any such statement, 
as they affirm the continuance of the pleading, com- 
memorative sacrifice — the continual remembrance of 
the sacrifice of the death of Christ and of the benefits 
we receive thereby. The man Christ Jesus, accord- 
ing to the Catechism, is thus virtually present as the 
true Consecrator in our Eucharist. Still more dis- 
tinctly are we there instructed concerning the real 
presence of His body and blood in that sacrifice to be 
first our oblation, and then our spiritual food. Com- 
bining the several statements, they amount to this : 
the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, in that it is a 
sacrament, has always in it two parts, whereof the in- 
ward and spiritual part is the body and blood of 
Christ ; and it has two purposes : first, to be a con- 
tinual remembrance or memory or memorial before 
God as well as man, not a repetition or continuance 
of the sacrifice of the death of Christ." And yet he 
says in the next paragraph : " He comes down in a 

* Keble's Eucharistical Adoration, p. 74. 



VIEWS OF ANGLICAN THEOLOGIANS. 107 

manner to offer Himself anew for each one of us in 
particular receiving Him worthily." 

Canon Liddon says also, in his " Life of Dr. Pusey," 
any well-instructed Churchman knows that the body 
and blood of Christ is offered in the Eucharist. 
Keble uses in the above extract language which ac- 
cords with the language of the liturgies, but his in- 
ferences and Liddon's do not accord with that lan- 
guage. As has been shown, there are no words used 
which say or imply that we in the Eucharist or that 
our Lord Himself makes such an offering. Logical 
inference cannot certainly take the place of the uni- 
versal language of the liturgies. 

W. G. Scudamore,* in his learned work, says : " In 
none of the most ancient memorials which we have 
cited does the priest profess to make an oblation of 
the body and blood of Christ Himself. They are 
strictly commemorative. The bread and wine, though 
now become by solemn consecration His body and 
blood, are still called the bread and cup." 

It will be seen in the first chapter on the invoca- 
tion that after that prayer they are no longer called 
bread and wine. The language at that point entirely 
changes ; but the elements, as has been shown, are 
named the bread and wine after the words of institu- 
tion and after the oblation, but not after the invoca- 
tion ; they are then called the body and blood of 
Christ. This is very clear in the American office, 

* Notitia Eucliaristica, p. 651. 



108 VIEWS OF ANGLICAN THEOLOGIANS. 

but even in those liturgies in which the prayer of 
invocation comes first they are still called the bread 
and wine, and so far justify the remarks of Scuda- 
more, and do not accord with the language of Keble 
and Liddon. 

There have in this and in the previous chapters been 
exhibited the nature and the object of the Eucharistic 
oblation, to which the Church in America, in the en- 
largement of the Prayer-Book in 1892, seems desirous 
of giving prominence and emphasis. The witness of 
all the great doctors of the early Church and of a 
long line in the Anglican Church is uniform. The 
oblation is not a presenting or offering of Jesus Christ, 
or of the body and blood of Christ. The holy gifts, 
having become holy by being set apart for sacramen- 
tal purposes, are offered for a commemoration and a 
memorial to remind, as it were, the Almighty Father 
of what His Son did for us — to bring before Him 
" the blessed passion and precious death, the mighty 
resurrection and glorious ascension," and to thank 
Him for the innumerable benefits procured thereby. 
We are also by this act setting before God our faith 
in the redemption of His Son. We are thus exhibit- 
ing our reliance on the work that He has done in our 
behalf. That is a glorious act of the Church. It is 
the most emphatic act of faith, and love, and grati- 
tude. Any one who will look at the oblation in this 
light must see how it is the most emphatic act of our 
religion ; how it humbles us ; how it exalts Christ ; 



VIEWS OF ANGLICAN THEOLOGIANS. 109 

and how it is the most real act of Christian wor- 
ship. The oblation is not only asking through 
Christ and for His sake, but it is the putting be- 
fore God the very acts which make Christian re- 
demption possible. 



PART SECOND, 



THE INVOCATION. 

" It is the spirit that quicken eth : the flesh profketh noth- 
ing ; the words that I speak unto you they are spirit and they 
are life."— St. John 6 ; 63. 



CHAPTER I. 

The Spiritual Gift ik the Eucharist. 

We come now to see distinctly how there are two 
parts of the Eucharist : the one which has reference 
to God, the other which has reference to us ; the one 
by which we move God to mercy by this great and 
emphatic act ot our faith, in which by an oblation we 
place before God what He has done for us, and to 
show our iaith in the Eedeemer ; the other as it be- 
comes an instrument by which He conveys to us a 
great spiritual gift. We are now to inquire what it 
is that in this second part He does for us, what bene- 
fit it is that we receive immediately through the ele- 
ments which have received the invocation of the Holy 
Spirit. 

If we examine carefully the service we shall find a 
change in the expressions which are used and which 
correspond with this twofold view. In the one it is 
the elements as they represent the redemptive acts of 
Christ ; in the other as they become the instruments 
to convey to us a blessing, to give us a great spiritual 
gift from God. In the Eucharistic service, before wo 
get to the invocation we speak of the bread and wine 
which are placed and offered on the altar for the pur- 



114 SPIRITUAL GTF1 IN THE EUCRARIiSl. 

poses of the sacrament ; then we speak of the bread 
which He broke and the wine which He poured out ; 
then we say that we celebrate and make with the holy 
gifts which we offer the memorial which He com- 
manded to be made ; and then, lastly, we pray that 
He would bless and sanctify " with His word and 
Holy Spirit these creatures of bread and wine." If 
there was any possibility of an ambiguity in the ex- 
pressions which preceded this, yet the invocation 
must indicate that up to this moment the elements, 
with which the service was dealing, were the " crea- 
tures of bread and wine/* Such they were at the 
beginning and such they have continued until after 
the invocation, at which time we adopt a different 
language. In accordance with what we have asked 
of God we now cease to speak of them in their natural 
state, and in the remaining part of the service we re- 
fer to them in their sacramental condition. We pray 
that " we and all who shall be partakers of this holy 
communion may worthily receive the most precious 
body and blood of His Son, Jesus Christ." And then 
when we come to partake, to commune on what has 
been so prominent in this service, it is said to each 
communicant, " The body of our Lord Jesus Christ 
which was given for thee," and " the blood of our 
Lord Jesus Christ which was shed for thee ;" and in 
the prayer which follows, when the participation has 
taken place, we give thanks " that Almighty and 
Everlasting God has vouchsafed to feed us, who have 



SPIRITUAL GIFT IN THE EUCHARIST. 115 

duly received these holy mysteries, with the spiritual 
food of the most precious body and blood of His Son, 
our Saviour Jesus Christ." The elements are not 
now spoken of as bread and wine, but as holy mys- 
teries. The word mystery means something which 
is visible and known, but implies that there is also 
something which is unseen. This is what we mean 
when we say, of any event, that it is a mystery. 
There is something which is outward and visible, but 
there is also something which is inward and hidden. 
This is one of the qualities of a sacrament. So the 
Catechism says that there are two parts to a sacra- 
ment : " The outward visible sign and the inward 
spiritual grace." In saying that we have received 
the holy mysteries, we imply that the elements of 
bread and wine, which were the oblation, have this 
twofold character which the sacramental name implies. 
The prayer of humble access might seem to be an 
exception ; but, on the contrary, it conforms to what 
is said of the change of language after the invocation. 
This prayer was originally placed in the liturgy of 
Edward VI., and it stood immediately before the re- 
teption. In that position it was peculiarly signifi- 
cant ; for having completed the consecration by the 
words of institution, oblation, and invocation, the 
minister and communicants are to kneel down and 
say : " Grant us so to eat the flesh of Thy dear Son, 
Jesus Christ, and to drink His blood, that our sinful 
bodies may be made clean by His body and our souls 



116 SPIRITUAL GIFT IN THE EUCHARIST. 

washed through His most precious blood, and that we 
may evermore dwell in Him and He in us." It was 
then, immediately preceding the reception, that we 
are to say that we may be partakers of the body and 
blood of Christ. It was not only on our part a memo- 
rial, a thanksgiving, but our words regarded them 
according to the sacramental doctrine which is con- 
tained and expressed in the invocation. The position 
of the prayer was changed to serve a purpose ; but 
any one must feel that it is now misplaced, and that 
it does not keep up the continuity of thought and 
expression, but that it manifestly interrupts that 
thought, and might give rise to the very opposite of 
that which was in the mind of those who removed 
it from the place which was originally intended 
for it. 

In order, then, to understand the import of the 
language which we use, we must, as we have in the 
case of the oblation, quote the words in which the 
invocation is made. The liturgy must come first, as 
that must give character to the act and interprets the 
meaning. 

In the American Book of Common Prayer we say 
after the sacred words and after the oblation : 

" TVe most humbly beseech. Thee, O merciful Father, to hear 
us, and by Thy Almighty goodness vouchsafe to bless and 
sanctify, with Thy word and Holy Spirit, these Thy gifts and 
creatures of bread and wine, that we, receiving them accord- 
ing to Thy Son, our Saviour's holy institution, in remembrance 



SPIRITUAL GIFT IN THE EUCUARIST. 117 

of His death and passion, may be partakers of His most blessed 
body and blood." 

In the Scotch liturgy the words are : 

" Vouchsafe to bless and sanctify with Thy word and Holy 
Spirit these Thy creatures of bread and wine, that they may 
become the body and blood of Thy most dearly beloved Son." 

In the Eoman mass it will depend on which prayer 
we consider to be the prayer of invocation. Before 
the sacred words there is this prayer : 

" Which oblation do Thou, God, we beseech Thee, vouch- 
safe to render in all respects blessed, approved, effectual, 
reasonable, and acceptable, that it may be made unto us the 
body and blood of Thy most beloved Son, our Lord Jesus 
Christ." 

Or if we take the prayer after the oblation as the 
invocation, it proceeds as follows : 

" Upon which voucnsafe to look with a propitiouc and 
serene countenance, and accept them as Thou wast pleased 
graciously to accept the gifts of Thy righteous servant Abel, 
the sacrifice of uur patriarch Abraham, and the holy sacrifice, 
the immaculate host, which Thy high priest Melchisedec 
offered unto Thee. 

" We humbly beseech Thee, Almighty God, command 
these things to be carried by the hands of Thy holy angel 
unto Thy high altar in the presence of Thy Divine Majesty ; 
that as many of us as by this participation of the altar shall 
receive the most sacred body and blood of Thy Son, may be 
replenished with all heavenly benediction and grace, through 
the same Christ our Lord." 



118 SPIRITUAL GIFT IN THE EUCHARIST. 

There is in these three offices a uniformity — namely, 
that after the oblation, following the sacred words, 
there is a prayer in each, that those who partake or 
who participate at the altar may receive the body 
and blood of Christ. Such is the language of the 
American office, and such is the language of the 
mass ; but the language of the Scotch office is more 
direct, and asks that the elements, or " creatures of 
bread and wine may become the body and blood of 
Christ." The words of the American office would 
seem to be more in accord with those of St. Paul. 
" The cup which we bless, is it not the communion 
of the blood of Christ ? The bread which we break, 
is it not the communion of the body of Christ ?" It 
does not say that the cup which we bless is the blood, 
but the communion or the communication of the blood 
of Christ ; and we pray that we, receiving these crea- 
tures, which have been blessed and sanctified, "may 
be partakers of His most blessed body and blood." 
In one respect this was no doubt intended as a modi- 
fication of the Scotch office, and for that purpose the 
latter part of the prayer was taken from the present 
English office. 

Let us now look at the language of the Greek office. 
Take, first, St. Clement's as representing the most 
ancient form to proceed after the oblation. 

" We beseech Thee that Thou wilt look graciously 
on these gifts now lying before Thee, Thou Self- 
sufficient God, and accept them to the honor of Thy 



SPIRITUAL GIFT IN THE EUCHARIST 119 

Christ ; and send down Thy Holy Spirit, the witness 
of the sufferings of the Lord Jesus, on this sacrifice, 
that He may make this bread the body of Thy Christ, 
and this cup the blood of Thy Christ, that those who 
partake of it may be confirmed in godliness ; may re- 
ceive remission of their sins ; may be delivered from 
the devil and his wiles ; may be filled with the Holy 
Ghost ; may be made worthy of Christ, and may ob- 
tain everlasting life." 

It will be observed that the same order is followed 
in the Prayer-Book that is followed in this most an- 
cient liturgy. It is on these gifts, after they have 
been offered, that the Church prays that the Holy 
Spirit may descend and make them the body and 
blood of Christ. 

In the liturgy of St. James the same order is main- 
tained, and the prayer of invocation is in these words : 

" Send down, O Lord, this Thy most Holy Spirit upon us, 
and upon these Thy holy gifts here set before Thee, that by 
His holy, good, and glorious presence, He may sanctify and 
make this bread the body of Thy Christ ; that all who par- 
take thereof may obtain remission of their sins and eternal 
life, may be sanctified in soul and body, and bring forth the 
fruits of good works." 

Here it will be observed that, notwithstanding the 
expressions in connection with the oblation — " tre- 
mendous and unbloody sacrifice" — the Church prays 
that on these gifts here set before God the Holy Spirit 
may descend to make them the body and blood of 



120 SPIRITUAL GIFT IN THE EUCHARIST. 

Christ ; and it may be observed also that they are 
called " holy gifts/' as they are in the American 
office. Here, then, by the prayer of invocation the 
gifts become something which before they were not. 

These are the words of invocation in the liturgy of 
St. Mark : 

" Send down Thine Holy Spirit upon us and upon these 
loaves and upon these cups, that the Almighty God may 
sanctify and thoroughly consecrate them, making the bread 
the body and the cup the blood of the ISTew Testament of our 
Lord Himself, our God and Saviour, and Supreme Being. 
Jesus Christ, that they may be to us who partake of them 
the means of faith, sobriety, health, temperance, sanctifica- 
tion, the renewing of our souls, our body, and spirit." In 
the prayer following this it is called " the immortal, heavenly 
food," and also that " we may worthily partake of the good 
things lying before us, the spotless body and precious blood 
of Thine only begotten Son, our Lord, our God, and our 
Saviour Jesus Christ." 

Here, again, is the change of language, the same 
as is found in the American service. 

The same order and expressions are found in the 
liturgy of St. Chrysostom. The oblation is in these 
words, " We offer to Thee Thine own out of Thine 
own gifts," which is then called " the tremendous and 
unbloody worship," and then the prayer of invocation 
proceeds as follows : 

" And we pray, beg, and beseech Thee to send down Thine 
Holy Spirit upon us and upon these gifts lying before Thee. 



SPIRITUAL GIFT IJSf TEE EUCHARIST. 121 

. Make tin's bread the precious body of Thy Christ, and, 
what is in this cup the precious blood of Thy Christ, . . . 
that it may be to those who partake of it for sobriety the re- 
mission of sins, the communication of the Holy Ghost, the 
fulness of the kingdom of heaven. " 

Here, again, the elements after the sacred words 
and the oblation are called still the gifts of God, ana 
it is on these gifts lying before Him that the Church 
prays that they may become the body and blood of 
Christ. They now become something which before 
this prayer they were not. In which the Prayer-Book 
agrees in the order and in the intent of the Greek 
service which is used to-day in the Eastern and Rus- 
sian churches. 

In the liturgy of Edward VI. the invocation is 
placed the first of the three acts, the sacred words 
coming second, and the ollation last. No doubt thie 
was done in imitation of the order in the Koman 
mass, and it would indicate also that the prayer pre- 
ceding the sacred words was the one which was con- 
ceived to be the invocation. The invocation in this 
liturgy is in almost the same words as are used in the 
Scotch office, and the invocation in the American 
office differs little from it. It is hardly to be sup- 
posed that it was placed first of the three acts, in 
order that the elements might receive their new char- 
acter, which makes them the means of giving us the 
body and blood of Christ, and that in this character 
they were offered in the oblation. The position that 



122 SPIRITUAL GIFT IN THE EUGHAEIST 

it occupies makes that a possible, but not a probable 
interpretation. Such is the opinion of Brett.* 

It is apparent, then, how clearly and distinctly the 
invocation gives expression to the spiritual benefits 
which come to us through the Eucharist. 

And as a further expression of this the Eucharist 
has been called a federal rite, in imitation of the sac- 
rificial feasts which are named in the Book of Leviti- 
cus. Part of the victim was consumed on the altar, 
a part was given to the priest, and a part was given 
back to the offerer, which he consumed. Thus it will 
at once be seen that there is in this respect something 
to suggest a likeness to the Christian sacrament. 
The elements are brought and placed on the altar for 
sacramental purposes, they are then offered unto God, 
and then they are consumed ; and this was com- 
manded to be done at the door of the tabernacle (Lev. 
3:2). So the eating of the Eucharist is to take place 
in the church. This in the Jewish service is called 
" the bread of God" (Lev. 21 : 7, 8, 21). 

* Dr. Thomas Brett's Dissertation : Collection of Primitive 
Liturgies, p. 159. " The reason why we have not exactly fol- 
lowed the liturgy of Edward VI. in this point is because that 
liturgy has not herein exactly followed primitive antiquity, 
and comes too near the Canon of the Mass, where this prayer 
for the Divine benediction, to sanctify the bread and wine, pre- 
cedes the words of institution, contrary to all other liturgies 
of the Christian Church, whether in the East or West ; and 
as that prayer was always placed in the last place to complete 
and perfect the consecration, and not to begin it. " 



SPIRITUAL GIFT IN THE EUCIIARIST. 123 

This is well stated by Dr. Kellogg :* u The offerer 
has brought the appointed victim ; it had been slain 
in his behalf ; the blood had been sprinkled for atone- 
ment on the altar ; the fat had been taken off and 
burned upon the altar ; parts had been given back by 
God to the officiating priest ; and now, last of all, the 
offerer himself receives back from God, as it were, the 
remainder of the flesh of the victim, that he himself 
might eat it before Jehovah." 

And this author has put the symbolical teaching of 
this part of the Jewish worship in a very clear light. 
He says : " When we ask ; then, what was the food 
or 6 bread of God/ of which He invited him to par- 
take who brought the peace offering, *and learn that 
i t was the flesh of the slain victim, here we meet a 
thought which goes far beyond atonement by the 
shedding of blood. The same victim whose blood 
was shed and sprinkled in atonement for sin is now 
given by God to be the redeemed Israelite's food by 
which his life shall be sustained. Surely we cannot 
mistake the meaning of this, for the victim of the 
altar and the food of the table are one and the same. 
Even so He who offered Himself for our sins on Cal- 
vary is now given by God to be the food of the be- 
liever ; who now thus lives by ' eating the flesh ' of 
the slain Lamb of God. Does this imagery at first 
thought seem strange and unnatural ? So did it also 

* The Book of Leviticus, by the Rev. S. H. Kellogg, D.D., 
p. 96. 



124 SPIRITUAL GIFT IN TUB EUCHARIST 

seem strange to the Jews, when, in reply to our Lord's 
teaching, they wonderingly asked, ' How can this man 
give us His flesh to cat ' (St. John 6 : 52). And yet 
so Christ spoke ; and when He had first declared 
Himself to the Jews as the antitype of the manna, 
the true bread sent down from heaven, He then went 
on to say, in words which far transcend the meaning 
of that type, l The bread which I will give is My 
flesh, which I will give for the life of the world ' (St. 
John 6 : 51). How the light begins now to flash 
back from the Gospel to the Levitical law, and from 
this, again, back to the Gospel ! In one we read, 
* Ye shall eat the flesh of your peace offerings before 
the Lord with joy ' (Deut. 27:7); in the other the 
word of the Lord Jesus concerning Himself (St. John 
6 : 33, 55, 57), ' The bread of God is that which 
cometh down out of heaven and giveth life unto the 
world. . . . My flesh is meat indeed, and My blood 
is drink indeed. ... As the living Father hath sent 
Me, and I live by the Father, so he that eateth Me 
shall live by Me.' And now the Shekinah light of 
the ancient tent of meeting begins to illumine even 
the sacramental table, and as we listen to the words 
of Jesus, ' Take, eat, this is My body which was 
broken for you,' we are reminded of the feast of the 
peace offerings. The* Israel of God is to be fed with 
the flesh of the sacrificed Lamb which became their 
peace.'' 

We come now to look into the Xew Testament and 



SPIRITUAL GIFT IN THE EUCHARIST. 1^5 

inquire for the authority which leads ms to expect 
the Divine gift which is to follow the oblation, and 
which we ask for in the invocation. The most direct 
passage is that of St. Paul's (I Cor. 10 : 16), " The 
cup which we bless, is it not the communion of the 
blood of Christ ? The bread which we break, is it not 
the communion of the body of Christ?" The word 
{noivoDvia) which we translate communion, in the 
Latin version is translated commanvcatio, which may 
mean an imparting to us of the body and blood of 
Christ. This is certainly implied in the language of 
St. Paul, that in partaking of the consecrated ele- 
ments we partake also of the spiritual gift of the 
Eucharist, which is the body and blood of Christ. 
This would appear to be the plain statement of the 
apostle ; and this is what the faithful communicant 
would expect to receive, and which from the Divine 
words he would have a right to expect to receive. It 
does not settle or say what is the nature of the gift, 
or in what manner we receive the body and blood of 
Christ ; but the language of the service does certainly 
accord with the language of St. Paul. "We pray that 
we may partake of the body and blood of Christ, and 
we are bidden, on receiving the consecrated bread and 
wine, to receive the body and blood ; and we immedi- 
ately after the reception give thanks that we have 
been fed with " the spiritual food of the most pre- 
cious body and blood of God's Son, our Saviour Jesus 
Christ." 



126 SPIRITUAL GIFT IN THE EUCHARIST. 

We may safely say that whatever the one means the 
other means ; whatever St. Paul meant, that the ser- 
vice or office means. It does not determine the na- 
ture of the Divine gift ; it simply says that what it 
received is the body and blood of Christ. If there ia 
a difficulty in the one case, there is a difficulty in the 
other case. If there is any difficulty in the words of 
the service, there is the same difficulty in the words 
of St. Paul. The words of the service appear to be 
very strictly in accordance with the words of the 
apostle. 

And possibly the words of the American office is 
more strictly in accord with the words of St. Paul 
than the words of the Scotch and of other offices. 
For the Scotch liturgy prays in the invocation, that 
" the creatures of bread and wine may become the 
body and blood ot God's most dearly beloved Son ;" 
while in the American office we say, " that we, re- 
ceiving them according to Thy Son, our Saviour Jesus 
Christ's holy institution in remembrance of His death 
and passion, may be partakers of His most blessed 
body and blood." The- apostle says : " The bread 
which we break, is it not. the communion of the body 
of Christ ?" 

But there is also the declaration of our blessed Lord 
in the discourse at Capernaum (St. John 6 : 53), ancl 
which is reiterated until it becomes remarkably em- 
phatic : " Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man, 
and drink His blood, ye have no life in you." This 



SPIRITUAL GIFT IN THE EUCHARIST. 127 

language is identical with that of St. Paul and with that 
of the Book of Common Prayer. Certainly it is declared 
by our Lord that we must eat and drink that which we 
give thanks has been given to us in the Holy Supper. 

"Whether in the discourse at Capernaum there was 
an immediate reference to the Eucharistic bread and 
wine is a question which has been debated, and has 
advocates on both sides, but there certainly can be no 
dispute on the emphasis of the words, and that we 
are told that we must " eat the flesh of the Son of 
Man and drink His blood. " 

The question, then, is how we shall comply with this 
command of our Lord. In what acts of mind and 
body shall we partake of that body and blood ? Is it 
by acts of repentance and faith ; is it by meditation ; 
is it by the cultivation of holiness ; is it by growth in 
grace ; is it by any act of spiritual cultivation ? Or 
is it by coming to the holy communion, after all the 
spiritual preparation which is recommended, and which 
is made a condition, that we may expect " to eat the 
flesh of the Son of Man, and to drink His blood" ? 
After reading the discourse at Capernaum, and then 
reading what three of the evangelists say of the in- 
stitution of the Eucharist, and then reading what 
St. Paul says in his Epistle to the Corinthians, would 
not the faithful communicant say : " I shall eat the 
flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood in the 
sense in which He wishes me to eat and drink it to 
my soul's health, when I partake of the holy com- 



128 SPIRITUAL GIFT IN THE EUCHARIST. 

muni on ; for the apostle says : ' The bread which we 
break, is it not the communion, or does it not com- 
municate the body of Christ ? and the cup which we 
bless, is it not the communion, or does it not com- 
municate the blood of Christ ? ' " 

What our blessed Lord said with great emphasis is 
this : ' 4 Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man, 
and drink His blood, ye have no life in j^ou." It is 
not said, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man 
in the Eucharist, but only that ye eat that flesh. 
Where it may be eaten or when it may be eaten is 
not in the command. There may be other ways of 
eating that flesh and drinking that blood. The 
teaching of the Church in the Prayer-Book certainly 
leads us to think that there are other means by which 
we may receive this great gift. Thus at the end of 
the service for " The Communion of the Sick," it is 
said that " if a man either by reason of extreme sick- 
ness, or for want of warning in due time to the min- 
ister, or for lack of communicants to receive with 
him, or by any other just impediment, do not receive 
the sacrament of Christ's body and blood, the min- 
ister shall instruct him, that if he do truly repent 
him of his sins, and steadfastly believe that Jesus 
Christ hath suffered death upon the cross for him, 
and shed His blood for his redemption, earnestly re- 
membering the benefits he hath thereby, and giving 
Him hearty thanks therefor, he doth eat and drink 
the body and blood of our Saviour Christ profitably 



SPIRITUAL GIFT IN THE EUCHARIST 129 

to his souFs health, although he do not receive the 
sacrament with his mouth. " In which it is very- 
clear that the Church thus recognizes the food of the 
soul to be the body and blood of Christ our Lord. 
But St. Paul just as distinctly recognizes the sacra- 
ment as the instrument by which we eat that spiritual 
food. The ordinary way, however, by which our 
Lord provided for the reception of this spiritual gift 
is by means of the sacrament ; but it is a gift inde- 
pendent of the Eucharist, which is the ordinary and 
appointed instrument for its conveyance. 

This, then, is the great lesson which the office of 
communion teaches us. It places distinctly in lan- 
guage that there is a spiritual gift, that we are brought 
into union and communion with our Saviour Jesus 
Christ. It teaches us that it is something far beyond 
a sign or a symbol of what we have received. The 
language of Scripture, embodied in the service, shows 
us how we may receive the great gift from our incar- 
nate Lord, how our souls may be nourished, how the 
seed of immortal life may be implanted in our mortal 
nature, how the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus 
from the dead shall also quicken unto everlasting life 
our mortal bodies by dwelling in us. 



CHAPTER II. 

The Relation of the Holy Spirit to the 
Eucharist. 

It will be observed that the invocation is a prayer 
for the descent of the Holy Ghost on the elements, 
or that by the operation of the Holy Ghost we may 
be made partakers of the body and blood of Christ. 
It is here, at the utterance of the invocation, that the 
Holy Spirit and His Divine operations are introduced 
into the service. One might suppose that Christ in 
His incarnate nature would alone be referred to ; and 
especially as the feeding on Him is declared to be that 
which is to give life to men : " Except ye eat the 
flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His blood, ye 
have no life in you." But the incarnation of Christ, 
the Son of God, in his mediatorial work is not more 
distinctly introduced into the Eucharistic act than is 
the Holy Ghost and His Divine operations. 

In one respect we should expect to find mention 
made of the Divine Spirit in the work of redemption 
as well as the Father and the Son. The work of re- 
demption is not a work which the Holy Scriptures 
confine to one person, the Son, but they ascribe it to 
the three. Thus St. Paul says to the Ephesians 



THE RELATION OF HOLY SPIRIT. 131 

(2 : 18) : " Through Him we both have access by one 
Spirit unto the Father/' We might expect to find 
each of the three persons of the blessed Trinity 
brought into view in the great act of Christian wor- 
ship, and we do so find them introduced. Thus the 
oblation is made to the Father to represent to Him 
the great redemptive acts of the Son, and to memo- 
rialize Him by those acts to be merciful to us ; and 
then we proceed to invocate the operations of the 
Holy Ghost to make these elements to us the body 
and blood of Christ ; and we pray that He may come 
down upon us as well as upon the elements. 

We shall find the invocation of the Holy Spirit 
made in the liturgies. In the previous chapter we 
have seen that this invocation was offered that He 
might make the elements the body and blood, or 
that they might be made the medium of communi- 
cating it. We now quote again from the liturgies in 
order to draw special attention to the fact that it is 
the Holy Spirit that is invoked. 

Thus in the liturgy of Clement the language is 

" Send down Thy Holy Spirit, the witness of the passion of 
our Lord Jesus, upon this sacrifice, that He may make this 
bread the body of Thy Christ, and this cup the blood of Thy 

Christ." 

The liturgy of St. James has these words : 

"Send down upon us and upon these gifts which are here 
set before Thee Thy most Holy Spirit, . . . that by His holy, 
good, and glorious presence He may sanctify and make this 



132 THE RELATION OF HOLT SP1B1T. 

bread the holy body of Thy Christ, and this cup the precious 
blood of Thy Christ. " 

St. Mark's liturgy expresses it thus : 

" Send down upon us and upon these loaves and these cups 
this Thy Holy Spirit, that He may sanctify and perfect them 
as being Almighty God ; and may He make the bread to be 
indeed the body, and the cup to be the blood of the New 
Testament of our very Lord, and God, and Saviour, and most 
great King Jesus Christ." 

These are the words of the liturgy of St. Chrysos- 
tom : 

" We beseech and pray Thee send Thy Holy Spirit upon us 
and upon these gifts here lying before Thee, and make this 
bread the precious body of Thy Christ, and that which is 
within this cup the precious blood of Thy Christ, changing 
them by Thy Holy Spirit." 

St. Basil's liturgy expresses the same in these words : 

" We pray and beseech Thee, O Thou Holy of Holies, that 
through Thy good pleasure Thy Holy Spirit may come upon 
us and upon these gifts here laid before Thee, and bless, and 
sanctify, and perfect them. Make this bread the precious 
body of our Lord God and Saviour Jesus Christ, and this cup 
the precious blood of our Lord and God and Saviour Jesus 
Christ, which was shed for the life of the world, changing 
them by Thy Holy Spirit. ,, 

The liturgy of Alexandria thus expresses it : 

" We sinners and Thy unworthy servants pray and beseech 
Thee, O Thou gracious God, the Lover of mankind, . . . that, 
through Thy good pleasure, Thy Holy Spirit may come upon 
us, Thy servants, and upon these Thy gifts here set before 



THE RELATION OF HOLT SPIRIT 133 

Thee, . . . and make this bread to become the body of our 
Lord God and Saviour Jesus Christ." 

In the Soman liturgy, as was shown in the last 
chapter, there is a prayer to the same effect, but the 
Holy Ghost is not mentioned. 

In the liturgy of Edward VI. , which follows the 
order of the Roman liturgy, the name of the Holy 
Spirit is introduced, and the prayer is uttered that 

" God with His Holy Spirit and word would vouchsafe to 
bless and sanctify these gifts and creatures of bread and wine, 
that they be unto us the body and blood of Thy most dearly 
beloved Son Jesus Christ." 

This prayer was afterward introduced into the 
Scotch office and afterward into the American office, 
as has already been pointed out. 

This fact, then, must be particularly observed that 
the prayer is that the Holy Spirit may effect this 
great purpose, that He would make this change, that 
He would make the elements to us the body and blood 
of Christ, or that we, partaking of them, may partake 
of the body and blood of Christ. This invocation is 
referred to as the means of the gift which is conferred 
in the Eucharist. Whatever is conferred upon us or 
is conveyed to us is thus declared to be by the oper- 
ation of the Holy Spirit. 

The change which is here named is a change of 
purpose or of effect. Common bread and common 
wine are intended to nourish the body only. They 
are assimilated with the body. They make it to 



134 THE RELATION OF HOLY SPIEIT. 

grow and to gain vigor for the purposes of life ; but 
when we pray that the elements may be changed by 
the operation of the Holy Spirit, we ask that the ele- 
ments of bread and wine may be consecrated to a new 
purpose, and may be made to produce new effects in 
our souls, in our moral and spiritual nature, that they 
may be made the means of bringing vigor to our 
moral purposes, that we may be enabled to grow in 
holiness, and may be united to Christ and grow more 
and more into His likeness, or, as the Eucharistic 
prayer expresses it, that " He may dwell in us and 
we in Him." The whole tenor of the service shows 
that this is the change for which we pray ; and indeed 
the greatest change that can take place, that the 
bread and the wine of the Eucharist may nourish not 
our bodies only, but also our spiritual nature. 

And we pray in the Scotch and in the American 
office that this effect may take place not only by the 
operation of the Spirit, but also by His word — " With 
Thy word and Holy Spirit." There is hero no doubt 
a reference to the words in Genesis (1:2): " And 
the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. 
And God said, Let there be light : and there was 
light." So here when God says through His minis- 
ters : " This is My body, this is My blood," we are 
praying that this word may become effectual through 
the Spirit, as God's word was effectual in producing 
order by the movement of the Spirit. 

It is asserted also that the very act of the incarna- 



THE RELATION OF HOLY SPIRIT. 135 

tion is effected by the Holy Ghost. We read in the 
Gospel of St. Matthew (1 : 20) : " Fear not to take 
unto thee Mary thy wife : for that which is conceived 
in her is of the Holy Ghost." This was said to Joseph 
by the angel. So in St. Luke (1 : 35) we read that 
the angel answered and said unto Mary : ' c The Holy 
Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the 
Highest shall overshadow thee : therefore also that 
holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called 
the Son of God." The same fact is referred to in the 
Apostles' Creed, i ' I believe in Jesus Christ, His only 
Son our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost." 
And in the Mcene Creed we say, " Was incarnate by 
the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary." • 

Thus this expression of the presence and work of 
the Holy Ghost is made in connection with all that is 
said of the incarnation of Christ, and of His great 
acts of redemption. It is not only the act of the Son, 
but it is an act done through the agency of the Spirit. 

It is certainly remarkable how much the work of 
Christ is referred to in connection with the work of 
the Holy Spirit. Not only is the incarnation referred 
to, but at His baptism John " saw the Spirit of God 
descending like a dove and lighting upon Him" (St. 
Matt. 3 : 16). So "fie was led by the Spirit into 
the wilderness to be tempted of the devil" (St. Matt. 
4:1). " It was through the Eternal Spirit [that He] 
offered Himself without spot to God" (Heb. 9 : 14). 
It was by the Spirit that He was raised from the 



136 THE RELATION OF HOLT SPIRIT. 

dead. " If the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus 
from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christ 
from the dead shall quicken your mortal bodies by 
His Spirit that dwelleth in you" (Rom. 8 : 11), 

Here, in the chief acts of the life and in the re- 
demptive work of the incarnate Lord, is the presence 
of the Spirit recognized in the Scriptures. lb is not 
spoken of as simply a Divine influence or a subtle 
power going forth from Christ's body, but it is de- 
clared that it is the Spirit Himself who is present and 
operating. The incarnation may be regarded as the 
great fact of the Gospel, as the great and primary 
fact of redemption ; but the particular influences and 
operations of the incarnation in the regeneration and 
renewal of man are distinctly ascribed to the influ- 
ence of the Spirit. These operations are mysteries 
which cannot be unravelled. The presence of the 
Spirit, with all His operations, is a fact, but a fact 
which cannot be explained, but only stated. It is, 
however, stated in Holy Scriptures in the most ex- 
plicit and emphatic terms, that He is operating in the 
recovery of man from sin, and in the renewing and 
purifying of his nature. So St. Basil says in his 
" Treatise on the Holy Spirit" : " As for the dispen- 
sations relating to man wrought by our great God 
and Saviour Jesus Christ, according to the goodness 
of God, who will gainsay that they are fulfilled 
through the grace of the Spirit ? Whether you will 
regard the things of old, the blessings of the patri- 



THE RELATION OF HOLT SPIRIT. 137 

archs, the help that was given by the law, the types, 
the prophecies, the heroism in war, the miracles 
wrought by the righteous, or the events of the dis- 
pensations concerning the appearing in the flesh of 
the Lord, all was by means of the Spirit." * 

Then in every act in which we are brought into re- 
lations to God as redeemed, and as being made sons 
of God and heirs of eternal life, there is the distinct 
recognition of the operation of the Holy Ghost. The 
new birth or regeneration is ascribed to Him ; the 
farther operation in the increase in strength and in 
growth in grace received in the laying on of hands — 
or what we now call Confirmation — is attributed to 
the Divine influences of the Spirit. It is because He 
dwells in us and sustains us that we become strong 
in Christ Jesus. In consequence we are exhorted 
" not to grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom we 
are sealed unto the day of redemption" (Eph. 4 : 30). 
And then our resurrection is ascribed to His indwell- 
ing (Rom. 8 : 12), which ought to show us the nature 
of the spiritual body to which St. Paul refers in the 
fifteenth chapter of the First Epistle to the Corin- 
thians. It is a spiritual body not because it is imma- 
terial, not because it does not occupy space, not be- 
cause it may not exhibit all the qualities of matter, 
but because the body of the resurrection is not sus- 
tained after the manner of an ordinary body of flesh 
and blood by decay and renewal ; but it is a spiritual 

* Basil, De Sancto Spiritu, sec. 29. 



138 THE RELATION OF HOLY SPIRIT. 

body because now the natural mode in sustaining the 
body ceases to operate, and the body of the resur- 
rection is raised and sustained by the direct power of 
the Holy Ghost. The spiritual men of Corinth 
(1 Cor. 14 : 37) were men in whom the Holy Spirit 
was dwelling and quickening their mortal nature. It 
is to be presumed that the apostle keeps to the same 
meaning of this word, and does not drop what may 
be called its theological meaning and adopt a philo- 
sophical one. 

When, then, we see in the New Testament that all 
the acts of Christ — all the redemptive acts — per- 
formed for man are ascribed to the accompanying 
power of God the Holy Ghost, why should we wonder 
when we find the flesh and blood of the Eucharist 
also ascribed to Him ? Why should we not expect to 
find in the Eucharist service — in the liturgies — the 
invocation calling upon God to send the Holy Ghost 
to change the elements, to make them to us the body 
and blood of Christ ? 

There is another noted instance (1 Cor. 10 : 1-4) 
of this in the example which St. Paul gives to the 
Corinthians. It is not only the fact that the ancient 
people passed through the sea, and did all eat the 
same spiritual meat, and did all drink the same spir- 
itual drink, but it is to be observed that they were 
baptized unto Moses, and so were brought into new 
conditions and new relations, just as the baptism unto 
Christ brought them into freedom and under the rule 



TUE RELATION OF HOLY SPIRIT. 139 

of the Redeemer. And so they were nourished by 
Christ, by the spiritual rock that followed them. 
Now this word spiritual is applied three times. It is 
spiritual meat, and spiritual drink, and spiritual 
rock. How were these spiritual ? In what sense 
were they spiritual ? How were the meat and the 
drink spiritual ? How was the rock spiritual ? It 
was the rock that was smitten in the wilderness, and 
from which there came water. The apostle meant to 
teach them more than that these examples and sym- 
bols were intended to nourish their minds and to pro- 
duce an effect upon their spiritual nature. It was 
such meat and drink as was intended not only to 
nourish the body, but to nourish the soul ; and that 
nourishment was effected by the Holy Spirit. It was 
called spiritual because it came through His Divine 
operations. These two acts— these two miracles — 
were intended to be types of the two sacraments, the 
means by which spiritual food was furnished ; and 
that spiritual food was created and furnished by the 
Holy Spirit. As St. Augustine said : " These acts 
were sacraments, different indeed in the outward and 
visible sign, but in the reality, in the thing given, in 
what was signified, they were equal with the sacra- 
ments of the Gospel.* The spiritual rock was Christ- 
Believing in God, in His providential care, in relying 

* Sacramenta illafuerunt, in signis diver sa, sed in re signift- 
catur paria. Tractate 26 on St. John's Gospel, p. 376, Edin- 
burgh translation. 



140 THE RELATION OF HOLY SPIRIT. 

upon Him for nourishment, they were made par- 
takers of Christ by the operation of the Spirit. 

Bat the most noted instance is that given in the 
discourse at Capernaum (St. John 6 : 26-63). When 
oar blessed Lord said that they must eat His flesh 
and drink His blood, that He was the bread that 
came down from heaven, they were offended, and ex- 
claimed that it was a " hard saying," and He immedi- 
ately replied that the eating to which He referred was 
spiritual. " It is the Spirit that quickeneth, the 
flesh profiteth nothing ; the words that I speak unto 
you, they are spirit, and they are life." Now- what 
did our Lord here mean by Spirit ? We turn to what 
St. Paul said (1 Cor. 15 : 46) : " The last Adam was 
made a quickening spirit," and we at once understand 
that in the bread, or by means of the bread, there is 
the Spirit that gives life, that quickens unto spiritual 
life. We shall see this more clearly if we examine 
the meaning of the word spirit. In order to get the 
meaning of the discourse it is especially necessary that 
we understand in what sense our Lord uses this word 
spirit. This is really the key to the meaning of what 
our Lord said at Capernaum. There are at least 
three meanings to this word. 

The first meaning is the essential quality of any- 
thing. As it is the spirit which gives life to any- 
thing, so it is the real part of man. What is man 
without the spirit, the soul, that which gives being ? 
It is the spirit which gives life and reality* to man, to 



THE RELATION OF HOLY SPIRIT. 141 

anything that is capable of motion. This is a sense 
in which the word is on our lips every day. Did our 
Lord use the word in this sense when He said that 
His words were spirit and that they were life ? What 
meaning would there be in His discourse had He 
said: " The flesh profiteth nothing; it is the life, 
the earnestness, the reality that quickeneth. My 
words have a reality. The flesh profiteth nothing ; 
but the real earnest reception of Me, that will nour- 
ish you unto life eternal" ? This certainly would not 
add much to a clear perception of His meaning, and 
would not meet their difficulties and allay their mur- 
murings. 

The second way in which the word spirit is used is 
this. It expresses the living principle in man — the 
soul, emotion, intelligence, the thinking part of man, 
which lifts the mass of matter, the mere clay (Gen. 
2 : 7) into a living, breathing man. It is in al- 
most all languages derived from that which means 
breath, which is the foundation word for soul. It is 
possible that this may be the meaning of the word in 
the expression, " My words are spirit and they are 
life." He could have said to them that they inter- 
preted His words to mean mere flesh. As St. Augus- 
tine said, they supposed that He meant by flesh that 
" which is separated into parts, that which is sold in 
the shambles." That certainly would profit them 
nothing ; that was only a physical act ; that had ref- 
erence only to the body ; it did not refer to the in- 



142 THE RELATION OF HOLY SPIRIT. 

telligent, emotional part of man. He meant to tell 
them that it was not the body of which He was speak- 
ing, but of that part which was thought, which 
formed conceptions, which determined on action, 
which exercised the will, and so determined the moral 
action. This was a consistent meaning, but it would 
hardly come up to an answer to their question. No 
one could have said that he was satisfied ; at least, no 
one could cease to murmur at His word, and to say that 
he could appreciate His meaning and acquiesce in it. 

But there is a third sense in which the word spirit 
is used. It is the one with which we meet so often 
in the New Testament, and which has already been 
pointed out. When our Lord speaks of spirit in this 
discourse He refers to the Holy Spirit. It is this 
Spirit which quickeneth, which makes meat spiritual, 
which makes drink spiritual, which makes the rock 
spiritual ; which is not only the power, but which is 
the person that quickeneth. Our Lord meant not 
that it was the flesh that was to quicken, and to give 
life, and to make us live forever, but that it was the 
Holy Spirit. The expression is one of those liebra- 
isms which are found in the New Testament, like the 
expression in the Acts, " He preached unto them 
Jesus and the resurrection" (17 : 28). It was not 
only Jesus as the Saviour, and the resurrection as one 
of the effects of His redemption ; but he preached 
unto them Jesus as He had risen from the dead, and 
so had come forth " with all power in heaven and on. 



THE RELATION OF HOLY SPIRIT. 143 

earth" (St. Matt. 28 : 18). So when our Lord said : 
1 ' The words that I speak unto you they are spirit and 
they are life." They are the life of the Spirit ; they 
are life-giving through the Spirit ; by means of His 
Divine operations He is the source of the quickening 
power. In themselves they are nothing, the flesh 
does not profit — will not make you live forever ; but 
the Spirit will make these elements powerful and life- 
giving ; they will convey to you the very gift which 
will make you live forever in My kingdom. 

Now our Lord would seem to say in this discourse 
that it is the Divine power which accompanies His 
words, and the relations which exist between the one 
who believes and Him the source of life. It is an 
operation of His Spirit, such as is so often referred 
to. He was not talking merely of eating flesh — that 
would profit nothing ; but the feeding on Him was 
an operation of the Holy Spirit. 

It would appear, then, that this thought was taken 
up by the apostles, and that it was made one of the 
prominent points in the liturgy. The bread and the 
wine were made the instruments by which the Holy 
Ghost imparted to us the body and blood of Christ. 
Whatever benefits they were to convey were to be 
conveyed through His operations ; and this thought 
was embodied in the invocation. The Church prayed 
in the liturgy that the merciful Father " with His 
word and Holy Spirit" would make these " creatures" 
to be that which in His discourse at Capernaum He 



144 THE RELATION OF HOLT SPIRIT. 

said they were. Our Lord had reference to the opera- 
tion of the Holy Spirit, and the expression which the 
Church gave to it was in this elementary act of the 
invocation. 

We find, then, that the invocation shows us how 
the eating this flesh and drinking this blood can 
profit us. It is the Spirit that quickeneth. It is the 
spiritual life which is given through these by Him. 
It is the Holy Spirit which makes them to have their 
life-giving power, and while possibly our Lord may 
not have primarily referred to the Eucharistic act as 
yet an instituted rite, He did refer to the great gift 
which was to be conferred. And, as was afterward 
made manifest, that gift was to be obtained in the 
Eucharist, so the invocation exhibited the manner in 
which His words were to be fulfilled. 

The words are, as St. Augustine said, figurative ; 
they are not literal. We do not, as those of Caper- 
naum seemed to suppose, eat flesh such as was sold 
in the shambles, but we eat that which the Holy 
Ghost, upon whom we call in the invocation, has by 
His Divine operation made our " spiritual food and 
sustenance in this holy sacrament." 

There is no explanation of the mode in which this 
Divine operation takes place. All that we can do is 
to bring into view and into their relations these oper- 
ations and influences, and connect them with the rec- 
ognition of the source of that Divine power in the 
liturgy of the Church. 



THE RELATION OF HOLT SPIRIT 145 

There is the invocation in the liturgy. It is a great 
and prominent fact that the Church has made this 
invocation an important part of the Eucharist service. 
We not only worship God ; we not only present to 
Him the memorial of His Son's work, but we call 
down, by our invocation, the Holy Spirit that He 
would make this bread and this cup that which our 
Lord said was necessary to eternal life ; that He 
would make them for us the flesh of the Son of Man 
— the meat which we must eat and the blood which 
we must drink — in order that we may have that which 
shall nourish us unto eternal life. 

As we have seen, then, that the oblation is a won- 
derful act in which we present to the Almighty Father 
the "work of redemption as that on which we rely ; so 
in the invocation we indicate the source of power, 
that which quickens us, makes us alive, and furnishes 
to us the spiritual food. It is a no less significant 
act, and a no less glorious one ; for as the former 
brings us before God, humbled for our sins, and ac- 
knowledging that all the mercy and all the power are 
with Him, so in the latter act we acknowledge that 
the only source of spiritual power is here indicated ; 
that in participating in the holy rite we are receiving 
nourishment and vigor, which shall give us immortal 
life with God in heaven. 



CHAPTER III. 

The Eucharistic Controversy. 

We might let the inquiry rest here. We have ex- 
amined the liturgy of the Church, and have found 
that it is an act of worship which is represented by 
the odlation ; and that it is a means of grace as it is 
represented by the invocation. The history of these 
two great acts, and how they are used in the liturgy 
as a means to those ends has been investigated ; and 
we have seen that in clear and reiterated language 
they teach us, and make us to say that we bring into 
view the great redemptive acts of the Son of God, and 
urge them upon the consideration of the Eternal 
Father. And they teach us, and also make us to say, 
that we are made partakers of the body and blood of 
the Eternal Son through the operations of the Holy 
Ghost. And in saying this we are saying no more 
than St. Paul said when he wrote to the Corinthians 
(10 : 16) that " the cup which we bless, is it not the 
communion of the blood of Christ ? The bread 
which we break, is it not the communion of the body 
of Christ ?" The liturgy does not go beyond the 
Scriptures. They are identical in their expressions. 
The meaning of the one must be the meaning of the 



T17J5J EUCHAR1STIC CONTROVERSY. 147 

other. Whatever St. Paul taught that we received, 
that the liturgy makes us to say we have received. 
The objection does not lie against the liturgy, if we 
make any objection, but it lies primarily against the 
apostle. It is a great mystery, and we are not bound 
to explain it as a preliminary to receiving it, any 
more than we are bound to explain the mystery of the 
G-odhead before we accept redemption and rely on the 
work of the Son of God. 

Now when we have thus investigated the liturgy, 
and have brought into view its acts, and the relation 
of those acts to us, it might be supposed that we had 
gone far enough, and that we may receive those acts 
in faith without an objection and without a word. 
We might say at this stage of the inquiry, " All that 
remains for me, a believer in Christ and a disciple of 
Christ, is to come to the participation with a penitent 
and loving heart, and to receive the Eucharistic food 
under whatever name Christ the Lord chooses to call 
it ; and to receive the grace, whatever may be its na- 
ture, as He is pleased to give it to me. That, all of 
us might be disposed to say, is all that is required or 
expected of us.'' And, therefore, I say our inquiry 
might be supposed at this stage to be sufficient. 

But speculative inquiry is one of the tendencies of 
the human mind. We are rarely satisfied with facts ; 
we wish for the philosophy of the facts, for the rela- 
tions of the facts, for the inferences from the facts. 
We do so in religion — in the Christian religion — until 



148 THE EUCHAR1STIC CONTROVERSY. 

we build up a great system of philosophy, until it be- 
comes difficult to say where the philosophy ceases and 
the facts stand pure and simple. This was the origin 
of a great deal of the sectarianism of the second and 
third centuries. These sects had their origin in 
speculative philosophy, as we learn from the works of 
Tertullian and of Irenseus ; and the same is true of 
the sects of modern times. The speculations of St. 
Augustine laid the foundations of John Calvin's sys- 
tem ; and it was speculation run riot that gave rise to 
the views of the Divine nature, and the relations of 
man to the Divine attributes ; and the speculations of 
the Greek theologians in the third, fourth, and fifth 
centuries are seen even in the statements of the facts 
themselves of the Christian faith ; and in the Middle 
Ages this spirit of speculation was more manifest 
than at any other period of the world's history. 
From the time of Charlemagne the great doctors — the 
Angelic Doctor, the Seraphic Doctor, and the Subtle 
Doctor — carried on speculations until Christianity was 
almost covered up and obscured in a cloud of meta- 
physics. Even morality was lost in the divisions and 
distinctions of a plain proposition, until it was diffi- 
cult to say what was a Divine precept or a moral 
duty, or what act under any circumstances could in- 
volve a sin. This spirit first showed itself in the 
Apostolic Church. " Certain men which came down 
from Judea taught the brethren and said, Except ye 
be circumcised after the manner of Moses ye cannot 



THE EUCHARISTIC CONTROVERSY. 149 

be saved" (Acts 15:1). That was their deduction ; 
that was their philosophy. That was not the Divine 
revelation ; that was not the fact. 

Philosophical speculation and logical inference are 
constantly presented to us as the revelation of God. 
As a writer in the Church Quarterly Review* ex- 
presses it : " The point at which Protestantism breaks 
down is the refusal to follow out that great doctrine 
(the incarnation) into all that is logically entailed by 
it." And it is the presenting what is " logically en- 
tailed" that is often presented and pressed as the rev- 
elation itself which inspiration has offered for our 
belief. 

The real controversy began in the ninth century. 
Previous to that time the great preachers and the 
great writers of the Church, having no fear of a the- 
ory before their minds, did not use language with 
logical exactness ; they often used it with rhetorical 
looseness. They used the language of the discourse 
of our Lord at Capernaum, and the language of St. 
Paul to the Corinthians without a qualification and 
without a caution. They probably did not take into 
consideration the danger into which they might fall 
when taken in hand by logicians and speculative phi- 
losophers. The language which they used in the free- 
dom of discourse to express what our Lord and His 
inspired apostles had said was subjected to the tests 
which the Organon of Aristotle furnished, and their 

* April, 1888, p. 1. 



150 THE EUCHABISTIC CONTROVERSY. 

rhetorical phrases were converted into logical propo- 
sitions, and the syllogism soon brought forth a con- 
clusion in a proposition which might astonish St. 
Chrysostom and St. Cyprian. Paschasius Kadbert,* 
Abbot of Corbey, a.d. 817, first tried his hand at it, 
and he broached the doctrine that the change wrought 
in the elements was a change in their substance, and 
they became what the words literally indicated. 
Thirty years after Eabanus Maurus, in 847 a.d., 
" opposed this with all his might." The doctrine 
was simmering and stewing in the monasteries of 
Europe for two hundred years, and was coming into 
shape, and a shape so well marked that it began to 
raise opposition. Berengarius stoutly opposed it ; 
but it was beginning to have such a hold on the minds 
of the theologians of that day, that the Pope caused 
Berengarius to make a recantation ; and Gregory 
VII., f the Great Hildebrand, though at first doubt- 
ful as to the doctrine, yet settled down into a belief 
and reception of it, and made Berengarius to recant a 
second time. Under Innocent III. the doctrine was 
acknowledged in the Lateran Council, and the word 
transulstantiation was invented to express it. Since 
then the doctrine and " all that is logically entailed 
by it" was received by the Council of Trent, and is 
required to be believed as an article of faith. 

* Archbishop Tillotson's Discourse against Transubstantia- 
tion. 
f Bowden's Life of Gregory VII., Book 3, chap. 16. 



THE EUCHAB1STIG CONTROVERSY. 151 

It is logic and philosophy which have "brought this 
view of the Eucharist into the Christian faith. Ifc 
was in consequence maintained to be part of the 
Catholic faith, that the Lord Jesus was produced on 
the altar by the utterance of the sacred words, and 
that He is offered in sacrifice. The words of the 
Soman liturgy express no such doctrine, and no such 
logical inference can be drawn from them. That 
part of the mass, as has already been pointed out, is 
older than Eadbert, and Maurus, and Berengarius. 

The revolt at the Keformation led to the study of 
the Eucharist anew ; and the effort was made not to 
find what our Lord had asserted and how St. Paul 
understood Him, and in what sense the Church, in 
her first liturgies, received Christ's words, but to de- 
duce what was " logically entailed by" the Divine 
words, and to harmonize them into a system. It is 
remarkable and it is also distressing to see the efforts 
which have been made to construct a doctrine of the 
Eucharist rather than to inquire into the revelation 
or what was once delivered to the Church. 

The reformers rejected the doctrine of transubstan- 
tiation, and they attempted to define another doctrine 
which was to take its place. Luther held to a pres- 
ence of Christ in " His glorified body and blood." 
This has been called consubstantiation, because it did 
not imply a change of substance, but a presence with 
and in addition to the presence of the material ele- 
ments ; the Lutherans, however, did not accept this 



152 THE EUCHAR1STIG CONTROVERSY. 

term. But it was another philosophical explana- 
tion. 

This yiew was opposed by Zwingli, a Swiss re- 
former. He maintained that there was no presence of 
the body and blood of Christ in any sense. He did 
not, of course, deny a- presence of Christy but it was 
not a presence different from His presence on any oc- 
casion or for any purpose. It was not a nourishment 
of the soul by the body and blood of Christ, but only 
by Christ Himself. 

John Calvin* held that Christ's body and blood were 
received, but he did not claim that the elements were 
the body and blood of Christ. He did not hold to a 
change in the substance of the elements. He thor- 
oughly repudiated such a change, and did not inquire 
into the manner or the nature of the change. His 
language does not always receive the same interpreta- 
tion. He claims that he is dealing with a great mys- 
tery, and it is not surprising that he should not use 
language which lays open the mystery and shows us 
how Christ gives us His flesh and His blood. He is 
only intent to show that in the Eucharist we receive 
what Christ promised us. Probably he does not con- 
cern himself with the question which has so much 
troubled theological disputants. There has been the 
question about the elements, whether their nature 
was changed, or whether He was united with them. 

* Institutes, Book 4, chap, 17. 



THE EUCHARISTIC CONTROVERSY. 153 

Hooker* did not think that it was necessary to re- 
gard the presence of Christ in the elements to be " an 
essential doctrine." He thought that the persons 
who had written on this subject had " grown" " to a 
general agreement concerning that which alone is 
material — namely, the real participation of Christ 
and of life in His body and blood by means of this 
sacrament ; wherefore should the world continue still 
distracted and rent with so manifold contentions, 
when there remaineth now no controversy saving only 
about the subject where Christ is ? Yea, even in this 
point no side denieth that the soul of man is the re- 
ceptacle of Christ's presence. Whereby the question 
is yet driven to a narrower issue, nor doth anything 
rest doubtful but this. Whether, when the sacra- 
ment is administered, Christ be wholly luithin man 
only, or else His body and blood be externally seated 
in the very consecrated elements themselves ; which 
opinion they that defend are driven either to consub- 
stantiate and incorporate Christ with elements sacra- 
mental, or to transubstantiate and change their sub- 
stance into His." And this great author concludes 
that " the real presence of Christ's most blessed body 
and blood is not therefore to be sought for in the sac- 
rament, but in the worthy receiver of the sacrament." 

This was the state of the controversy down to the 
present century. No doubt individual theologians 

* Hooker, Book 5, chap. 77, sees. 2, 6. 



154 THE EUCHAR1STIC CONTROVERSY. 

held that there was a presence with the sacrament, or 
that the elements in some mysterious manner gave 
Christ to the soul ; while others, after the teaching 
of Hooker, held that it was not a question to be dis- 
cussed, as it was one beyond our knowledge. 

The term which has long been in use is real pres- 
ence, but these words have ceased to indicate that 
which they did originally. It was originally a philo- 
sophical term, and came out of the mediaeval discus- 
sions. No doubt it was originally used to express a 
presence of Christ in the elements by transubstantia- 
tion. It was the presence of what was called the res 
— the res sacramenti. There was the sacr amentum, 
but there was also in the sacrament a reality, which 
was Christ Himself ; and this was called the thing of 
the sacrament, the res sacramenti. According to the 
Aristotelian metaphysics, there were the signum and 
the res signi. When one spoke of the real presence 
before the Beformation, he meant the elements tran- 
substantiated into Christ, as that doctrine is expressed 
by the Council of Trent. But the term became less 
philosophical after the doctrine of the Eoman Church 
was rejected ; and it meant that Christ was present 
in some manner, and made the sacrament efficacious, 
but did not confine the view to the manner ; and its 
use in most cases had nothing to do with the manner. 
According to Hooker, it did not involve the question 
of where, but only the fact of Christ's presence. 

The influence of the Oxford-Tract controversy 



THE EUCHABIST1C CONTROVERSY. 155 

helped to restore the use of the expression ; but at 
the same time it was maintained that it was a spirit- 
ual presence. The presence of the spirit, the opera- 
tion of the Holy Spirit, the quickening of the Divine 
Spirit, gave a reality and a power which made the 
presence more real than it could be through the in- 
strumentality of a change of substance. 

But then there came a revival of the opinion that 
there was a change in the elements of a mysterious 
nature, and that Christ was in the elements in some 
way which it was presumption to try to explain. And 
it was held that where the consecrated elements were, 
there was Christ. John Keble, who had been the 
editor of Hooker's works, and who embraced the 
views of the great Anglican, toward the latter part of 
his life abandoned Hooker, and embraced the growing 
view of a presence with or in the elements. In 1827, 
when he published the " Christian Year," * he wrote 
in one of the hymns : 

" There present in the heart, 
Not in the hands.' ' 

Canon Liddon gave an account in the Church Quar- 
terly, how in the last month of his life he changed 
these lines so that they might read, 

" There present in the heart 
And in the hands/' 

in which he abandoned the views which had pre- 
* Christian Year, Gunpowder Treason. 



156 THE EUGHARISTIC CONTROVERSY. 

vailed, and embraced those which have been daily 
growing for the past forty years. 

Keble also, in 1857, published an essay on " Eucha- 
ristical Adoration." He meant by this that the ele- 
ments after consecration were to be adored, because 
of the presence of Christ in those elements. It was 
a remarkable* admission on his part that there was 
no provision made in any of the liturgies for such 
adoration. In the Roman liturgy, as has been pointed 
out, when the priest has uttered the words, " Hoc est 
enim corpus meum" and when he has also said, " Hie 
est enim calix sanguinis mei" he holds them up for 
the adoration of the worshippers. According to the 
Eoman doctrine, Christ, whole Christ, Christ body, 
soul, and divinity was present. Keble did not hold 
this doctrine, but he now maintained a presence in 
the element in a manner which was not explained, 
because it was a mystery which it would be presump- 
tion to attempt to explain ; but in his estimation it 
was nevertheless a fact, and a fact which called for 
action. 

* John Keble, on Eucharistical Adoration, chap. 3, sec. 11, 
p. 113 : " The only plausible objection that I know of to the 
foregoing statement arises from the omission of the subject 
in the primitive liturgies, which are almost or altogether 
silent as to any worship of Christ's body and blood after con- 
secration. We find in them neither any form of prayer ad- 
dressed in special to His holy humanity so present, nor any 
rubric enjoining adoration inward or outward/ ' 



THE EUCHARISTIC CONTROVERSY. 157 

The doctrine of the presence of Christ in the ele- 
ments has given rise to another inference. The con- 
secrated elements are enclosed in what is called a tab- 
ernacle, which is placed over the altar for the perpet- 
ual worship of the attendants. Such a view of the 
presence is not a revelation. It is the result of specu- 
lation and logical inference. It cannot be claimed 
that it was included in the faith which was once de- 
livered to the saints. 

It has been the purpose of this dissertation simply to 
exhibit the meaning of the Scriptures and the teach- 
ing of the liturgies. It must be supposed that in re- 
ceiving the form of worship from the apostles, the re- 
vealed doctrine of the Eucharist was embodied in 
those liturgies, and that we have in them an exhibi- 
tion of the worship of the Church as it was delivered 
by the first and inspired founders of the Church. 



IJSTDEX. 



Ambrose, 83. 

American Service, 116, 126. 

Ancient Doctors, Views of, 73. 

Ancyra, Council of, 79. 

Andrews, Bishop, 94. 

Anglicans on Oblation, 89. 

Anglo- Catholic Library, 66, 102. 

Answer about Oblation : Cox, 61 ; Cranmer, 61 ; Bishop of 

Durham, 61 ; Bishop of Lincoln, 61 ; Ridley, 61 ; JSix 

Bishops, 61 ; Archbishop of York, 61. 
Apostolical Constitution, 78. 
Aristotle, Organon, 149. 
Athanasius, 77. 
Augustine, 80, 84, 86, 139, 141, 144, 148. 

Baptismal Controversy, 32. 

Basil, 136. 

Berengarius, 150. 

Bessarion, 65. 

Beveridge, 94. 

Bilson, 92. 

Bingham, 41. 

Bona, Cardinal, 42. 

Body and Blood offered, 31, 45. 

Bossuet, 35. 

Bowden's Life of Gregory VII. , 150. 

Bramhall, 95. 

Bread and Wine, Creatures of, 126, 143 ; Bread of God, 123. 

Brett, 40, 42, 54, 60, 65, 100, 122, note. 

Brevint, 98. 

Bull, 99. 

Burnett, 61. 

Butler referred to, 102. 



160 INDEX. 

Calvin, 148, 152. 

Capernaum, Discourse at, 126. 

Carthage, Council of, 79. 

Catechism, English, 106, 115 ; Russian, 66 ; Trent, 35, 39. 

Christ, Offering of, 31, 34, 68. 

Christian Year, 155. 

Chrysostom, 86, 87. 

Church, Organization of, 17. 

Church Quarterly, 149. 

Circular on Oblation at the Reformation, 61 ; Cox, 31 ; Cran- 

mer, 61 ; Bishop of Durham, 62 ; Bishop of Lincoln, 61 ; 

Ridley, 31, 62 ; Six Bishops, 62 ; Archbishop of York, 62. 
Common Bread and Wine, 57, 133. 
Communion of Sick, 128. 
Consecration of Elements, 12, 66. 
Consubstantiation, 152. 
Controversy, Eucharistic, 146. 
1 Corinthians 10 : 16, 125. 
Corpus meum, Hoc ed, 37, 66, 156. 
Cosin, 95. 
Councils, General, 102 ; Carthage, 79 ; Ferrara, 64 ; Florence, 

42, 64 ; Trent, 35, 39. 
Crankenthorpe, 97. 
Cranmer, 31, 63, 90. 

Creed, Apostles', 135 ; Nicene, 135 ; Pius IV., 34 
Cyprian, 80. 
Cyril of Jerusalem, 82. * 

Daubeny, 104. 

Dispersion of Apostles, 19. 

Doctrine of Roman Liturgy, 29, 34, 73. 

Doctors, Views of Early, 73, 125. 

Edward VI., Liturgy of, 12, 53, 55, 125. 

Elizabeth, 89. 

England, Bishop, Translation of Mass, 36, 39, 43, 70, 83. 

Epochs of English Theologians : First, 89 ; Second, 93 ; 

Third, 102. 
Eugenius, Pope, 65. 
Eusebius, 76. 



INDEX. 161 

Fathers, Library of, 103. 

Federal Eites, 22. 

Florence, Council of, 42, 64, 73. 

Floras, 43. 

Form of Worship in all Churches, 16. 

Fulgentius, 78. 

Gibbon, 68. 

Gifts, Why called Holy, 29, 120. 
Gorman Controversy, 32. 
Gospels, Difference in Three, 20. 
Gregory VII., 150. 

Hall, Bishop, 33. 

Hebraisms, 136. 

Henry VIII.,86, 90. 

Hicks, 100. 

Hildebrand, 145. 

Holy Gifts, 29, 30, 52, 108. 

Holy Spirit : Office in Incarnation, 135 ; in Baptism, 135 ; in 

Regeneration, 135 ; in Resurrection, 135. 
Homilies referred to, 91. 
Hooker, 25, 92, 108, 152. 
Hostiam Immaculatam, 30, 38. 
Humble Access, Prayer of, 115. 

Incarnation, 138. 

Inference, Logical, 148. 

Innocent III., 43, 150. 

Invocation in Liturgy : in American, 116 ; in St. Chrysostom, 

120 ; in St. James, 119 ; in St. Mark, 120 ; in St. Clement, 

118 ; in Roman, 117 ; Scotch, 117. 
Irenaeus, 75, 148. 
Isidore, 70. 

Jewell, 91, 94. 

John 6 : 52, 127. 

Justin Martyr, 12, 57, 74. 

Keble, "Christian Year," 155; " Eucharistical Adoration," 
106, 156. 



162 INDEX. 

Kellogg, 125. 
Kocvuvca, 125. 

Lambert, 90. 

Language, Value of„33 ; Universal, 57. 
Laodicea, Council of, 79. 
Lateran Council, 150. 
Laud, 71, note, 94. 
Aeirvpyog, 23. 
Leslie on Deism, 102. 
Library of Fathers, 162. 
Liddon quoted, 107. 

Liturgy, Marks of, in New Testament, 21 ; Form, 14 ; Author- 
ity of, 15. 
Liturgicse Origines, 14, 105. 
Logical Inference, 148, 149. 
Lombard, 70, note. 
Luther, 151. 

Macarius, 77. 

" Made unto us," 58. 

Maskell, 39. 

Mass, 33, 43, 57 ; Date of, 33, 53 ; Quoted, 38 ; Saying Mass, 68. 

Mede Quoted, 95. 

Medievalism, 148. 

Mediaeval Morality, 148. 

Memorial, The Oblation, 57, 60, 70, 88, 100. 

Moehler, 35. 

Melchisedec, 38, 81. 

Neil, History of Eastern Church, 65. 

Oblation, Three, 29, 30 ; why called Holy, 53 ; in Mass called 
Bread and Wine, 47 ; called Memorial, 74 ; Offering of 
Christ; American Liturgy, 56, 58; Edward VI., 12, 53; 
Kussian, 13 ; Roman, 13, 57 ; St. Mark's, 48 ; St. Basil, 49, 
58; Alexandria, 49; Mozarabic, 50, 52; St. Clement, 49/ 
Scotch, 51 ; St. James, 46. 

Offering, What, 52, 56 ; Three, 29. 

Offertorium, 29. 

Ordinarium, 29. 



INDEX, 163 

Organization of the Church, 17. 
Origen, 76, 
Origin of Sects, 143. 
Oxford Tracts, 61, note. 

Palmer, W., 14, 101. 

Parts of Eucharist, 113. 

Paschasius, 89. 

Patrick, Bishop, 94. 

Peace Offerings, 123 ; Types of Eucharist, 74, 124. 

Philosophical Speculations, 148. 

Philpotts, Bishop, 33, 104. 

Presence, Real, 62, 67, 154. 

Private Judgment, 101. 

Tipootyepa, 23. 

Prothesis, 67. 

Pusey, 41, 60, 67. 

Ratramnus, 86. 

Real Presence, 62, 67, 154. 

Reformation, 31, 84, 90, 102, 151. 

Reformers, 69, 89. 

Regeneration, 32, 52, 63. 

Renaudot, 54, 65. 

Res Sacramenti, 154. 

Ridley, 31, 90. 

Romans 15 : 15 quoted, 25. 

Sacrament, Type of, in Leviticus, 60, 124. 

Sacrifice, Christian, 68, 70 ; Tremendous and Unbtoody, 47, 

119. 
Scudamore, 107. 
Seabury, Bishop, 11, 12, 103. 
Sectarianism, Origin of, 148. 
Sick, How they may eat, Eucharist, 128. 
Spirit that Quickeneth, 146 ; Relation to Eucharist, 130. 
Spiritual, Three Meanings, 140 ; Body, 137 ; Food, 139 ; Man, 

138 ; Resurrection, 139. 

Tabernacle, 157. 
Taylor, Jeremy, 96. 



164 INDEX. 

Tertullian, 12, 76. 
Theodoret, 78. 

Three Persons in Kedemption, 130. 
Thorndike, 66, note. 
Tillotson, Archbishop, 150. 
Transubstantiation, 34, 39, 41, 89. 
Trent, Council of, 35, 39. 
Turrecremata, 64. 

TJrsuline Manual, 36. 

Wickliffe, 89. 

Wilson, Bishop, 100, 105. 

"Word, With Thy," 134. 

Worship by Eucharist, 16, 18, 20, 68, 







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